Play On
by Caprichoso
Summary: A selection of one-shots inspired by random songs but left to mature beyond the ubiquitous "shuffle challenge". Lots of friendship, BBRae, BBTerra, RobStar. Many perspectives explored, including villains.
1. Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word

**AN: **Welcome to a series of song-inspired one-shots done my way. That is to say, I'm taking the ubiquitous "shuffle challenge" but putting my own twist on it. I'll listen to a song that shuffle brings me, but rather than writing as the song plays and stopping when it ends, I will listen to it in its entirety, analyze it, and write a story that fits. This is no small feat, given the schizophrenic mess that is my music library. I'm challenging myself to incorporate at least one line or turn of phrase from each song into the corresponding story, so my challenge to you all is to listen to the songs and find the bits I've borrowed.

I'll occasionally put in a frame of reference for these, but only when I feel it's necessary to establish a timeline. Also, the majority of my author's notes will be at the end so as not to spoil things. I'd much rather have you all along for the ride.

This should be updated far more frequently than most things I write; it's easier to do, and it makes for good practice. I can't guarantee I'll be proud of all of these, but they'll at least be something.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Teen Titans or any of the songs upon which these stories are based.

**Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word- Ray Charles and Elton John**

The ice wasn't helping.

Raven could tell that much from her vantage point on the couch, where she had been on the same page for the ten minutes her book had been open.

Beast Boy sat on the far end of the same couch with his back turned to her, an ice pack pressed against the growing lump on the back of his head. The occasional groan would escape his lips, followed by a growl as he pressed the ice against the wound harder.

It was painful to watch. The worst part, however, wasn't what she saw, but what she felt.

The emotions surrounding the green shapeshifter were jagged and sharp as broken glass, radiating out from him like a porcupine's quills to keep out everyone and everything.

Raven slammed her book shut and strode over to her teammate. "For the last time, Beast Boy, let me heal—"

Faster than she could blink, the changeling was on his feet, eyes blazing as his rage and hurt slammed against her shields. "No, Raven, I will not let you heal this! You obviously thought I deserved it, so it stays!" He winced and pressed the icepack against his head again. "It's the same sad situation every single time, Raven. I make you mad, you beat me up, you feel bad about it, you heal me. It's absurd. This time, we're both going to live with the consequences of your actions."

Mouth working as she searched for an explanation, Raven found herself staring at the ground. "I... I didn't mean for it to—"

"You threw me into a _wall_, Raven. You know how solid the Tower walls are, and you threw me backwards into one. There are only so many ways that can turn out."

"I didn't think—"

Beast Boy laughed, a harsh, grating sound that was nothing like the laughter that held their team together. "Yeah, that's right. That's usually my line, isn't it? But when I don't think, nobody ends up having to get their head x-rayed for fractures. And everybody thinks _I'm_ the stupid one."

Shame poured over Raven, soaking her from head to toe in hot and cold. She wanted nothing more than to phase through the floor, but she was desperate to make things right this time.

"Look," she began, "You know I didn't mean for you to get hurt so badly. Why can't you just accept my apology and let me heal you?"

He gave her a venomous smirk. "Apology? Really?" Shouldering past her, he walked down the hall. As Raven was about to follow, his raised voice echoed back to her. "When was the last time you ever said the words, 'I'm sorry'?"

Every lightbulb in the tower flickered and exploded.


	2. All Things Considered

**AN:** I generally won't touch country music with a ten-foot pole, but this song showed up in my library somehow, and I'm actually quite fond of it.

**All Things Considered- Yankee Grey**

The common room had been rebuilt, all the damage from the robotic army's assault patched and painted over. New furniture was in place, still wrapped in plastic; the Titans in the room were unwilling to remove it without their last member present.

No one had seen Beast Boy for three days. The green boy had locked himself in Terra's room and jammed something into the door controls so that nothing short of breaking it down would allow entry. Cyborg had considered doing just that, but Robin had insisted that they give Beast Boy time to heal on his own.

There was, however, the issue of nutrition. The few stashes of food Terra had kept in her room out of habit would not hold Beast Boy for long; he needed protein, and lots of it. His shapeshifting required large amounts of available amino acids in order to make the necessary changes rapidly and with less pain. Cyborg always feared what might happen if his best friend's unstable DNA needed more amino acids than he had available; he had nightmares of coming home to find a puddle of primordial soup that would never again shift back into his little buddy.

Therefore, Cyborg had overcome his distaste for tofu enough to prepare food for his friend. Three times a day, he would transform a block of the white gunk into the best meal he could make: tofu burgers with all of BB's favorite toppings, Caesar salad piled high with blocks of seared tofu, tofu with apricot and onion sauce over rice (a tribute to his own grandmother's chicken recipe). He had even looked up African dishes and found a Lamumban peanut stew that he deemed to have sufficient protein for Beast Boy's dietary needs.

Raven had volunteered to be the delivery system for these meals; she would knock twice on his door, then phase a tray with the dish through onto the floor. She didn't tell any of the others, but it was getting progressively more difficult to find a space on the floor that wasn't already occupied by one of the trays. It appeared the food was going untouched.

And so they all stood in the common room, unsure of what to do next. Starfire was eager to knock on friend Beast Boy's door to invite him to the ritual of removal of the wrap of plastic, but the others were concerned about trying to pull him out of his room too early. All of them were still showing emotional wounds from Terra's betrayal, and that might not be the best environment for Beast Boy.

As they stood around in silence, trying to find a solution, the clatter of dishes from the kitchen snapped them out of their joint reverie. Beast Boy, looking haggard and thinner than they had ever seen him, was organizing his stacked dishes to begin washing them.

Starfire flew over and seized the green boy in a hug, nearly causing him to drop the last bowl. "Friend Beast Boy! It is joyous to see you once more! Please, allow me to do the washing of my friend's dishes. I have been missing you so very much and unable to help you these past days."

With a weak smile, the changeling nodded and extricated himself from the hug to wander over to the others.

Cyborg had quickly scanned the plates and found that the majority of the food had gone largely untouched, with two exceptions. As he pulled the Grass Stain in for a hug, he heard mumbling from his chest. "Y'know, Cy, if I'd known I could get you to cook tofu, I'd have locked myself in my room a long time ago."

Chuckling for his friend's benefit, he pulled away and held him at arm's length. "Nah, this was a one-time deal. Next time you do that, you're gettin' nothin' but baby back ribs till you come out."

"Fair enough." The green young man scratched at the back of his head, looking down at the ground. "I thought you said Grandma Stone's apricot and onion sauce would never touch tofu."

Cyborg smiled. "Well, maybe that rule can slide every now and then. And how'd you like the peanut stew?"

Tears shone in Beast Boy's eyes, but he had a tiny smile on his face. "It tasted just like the one King Tawaba used to make... thank you, Cy."

His own eye welling up, Cyborg swiped at his face with a knuckle. "None of that, now, String Bean. You're gonna make me rust here."

With a pat to his friend's shoulder, Beast Boy turned to face Robin.

"The common room's all fixed up, Beast Boy. All that's left is pulling the plastic off the couch, and you'll be back to playing Mega Monkeys 4. Care to do the honors?"

Beast Boy nodded, then transformed into a cat and began tearing at the plastic, shredding it to ribbons as the Titans' leader watched with satisfaction. It seemed Beast Boy was slowly getting back to normal.

Raven stood to the side, observing Beast Boy's behavior closely. Robin might be fooled, but she could feel the rage and hopelessness pouring out of the cat as it attacked the wrapping. There was no playful spirit to this; only catharsis. Still, that might be just what he needed at the moment.

When he shifted back to his normal form and stood panting, Raven approached and pulled him into a hug. It was not a long, lingering hug, but it was a hug nonetheless— not something given lightly. She felt mild shock from him before the warmth of friendship and gratefulness shone through.

"How do you feel, Beast Boy?" The question was as uncharacteristic of her as the hug, but she felt it necessary. No one else would get the degree of honesty from him with that question that she would, and so she took it upon herself to ask. That wasn't to say, however, that she didn't ram the strongest shield that she could quickly form into place.

His ears drooped, and the flood of painful emotions she had expected crashed into her. She was glad she had prepared for it; the backlash would likely have destroyed the common room again.

"All things considered..." the changeling's voice cracked, and she saw his fang pierce his lip as he tried to suppress his emotions. "All things considered, I'm doing just fine." He forced a grin onto his face, and though Raven saw the effort it cost him, though she knew it was all a sham put on for his friends' benefit, she made herself return the smile. She even ignored the trickle of blood running down his chin.

Beast Boy was smiling again. That smile held the team together. That was what mattered for now.


	3. Something We Can't Be

**AN:** This one is set at the end of Calling All Titans. Robin is hard to write for me, but occasionally it clicks.

Project 86 is one of my few favorite remnants from my days of listening to Christian music: interesting time signatures run with military precision, lyrics that aren't abysmally trite, and just an all around great thing to have playing most days.

**Something We Can't Be- Project 86**

The chessboard was set, and the white pieces were dropping faster than Robin could track. In his head, he heard Batman's voice in a chorus alongside his own, berating him for his lack of foresight. How could he have been so naïve as to believe his team of teenagers, barely more than children despite their powers, could handle a team of supervillains that had soundly beaten even the Doom Patrol?

He should have called the Justice League. Threats-to-the-World-Only requirement be damned; the Brotherhood of Evil had their sights set on eradicating an entire generation of superheroes. That in itself was a threat to the world at large. What would happen when Earth's protectors grew too old to fulfill their duties, and there was no one to take the torch from them?

If he was to be honest with himself, he knew it wasn't any adherence to the rules that had kept him from asking for help. It had been his pride. Pride had sabotaged him with Slade, and his promises to his team that he would learn from the mistake had proven hollow.

But was it so wrong to have hoped that his generation could prove themselves worthy? That they could finally show their parents and mentors that they were ready to stand on their own against a real opponent?

In the end, they were just children playing soldiers, trying to convince the world they were something that they couldn't be.

There was a fine line between confidence and hubris. If Batman had had any true failings, one of his greatest was his failure to show his protege where that line lay.

As Madame Rouge's arms enclosed him, the Boy Wonder knew it was a lesson learned too late.


	4. Duck Tales

**AN:** Yes, this is in my library. Yes, I am proud of that.

**Duck Tales Theme- Jeff Pescetto**

"Seriously, though, just listen to it! It's totally us! 'Might solve a mystery, or rewrite history.' You can't tell me that's not us!"

Robin tried unsuccessfully to quell the throbbing in his forehead. "For the last time, Beast Boy, that is _not_ going to be our new theme song."

"But it fits so well! We just replace two syllables!"

"_No_. Now go back to sleep. It's three in the morning. And if you ever use my door override code again for anything that does not constitute an emergency, I will weld your door shut and make you enter and exit your room through the window."

Sighing, Beast Boy wandered out into the hallway. As he closed the door, Robin heard a gravelly voice singing off key. "Ti-Tans! Woooo!"


	5. Nerve

**AN:** Hello from Poland! I'm off traveling for a couple months, so updates will be spotty at best. I have lots of installments written, and I'm working on something that grew from this into its own four-part story.

I love working with characters other than the Titans when the opportunity presents itself, and here it most certainly did. There's more to any character than you might think at first.

**Nerve- Soilwork**

Trigon the Terrible, the embodiment of purest evil, never wished his daughter harm. The rest of her world could— and would— perish in the fires of his glorious arrival, but she was too dear to him. His gem, his Raven, would forever remain safe with him.

As any father long separated from his child, he felt keenly the years with her he had lost, her childhood stolen by the self-serving monks of Azarath. This problem would be rectified with his coming; his daughter would regress to her childhood years once more, and he would raise her as she should have been— fierce and beautiful, a princess worthy of her father's heritage. Raven would attain more power within the first year of his coming than she could ever have hoped to wield while retaining her humanity. Trigon would see to this personally.

Her fate was inevitable. The venomous script was written and would be performed in its entirety. The prophecy would be fulfilled, and any attempts to stop or delay it would fail. He wished, though, even as he sent his messenger forth, that Raven could understand this as he did.

Trigon loved his daughter, and worlds beyond her imagination would be her reward for just one simple act of obedience.

But however necessary it might be, it pained him to see her suffer.


	6. How You Remind Me

**Nickelback- How You Remind Me**

As he crammed another sack of jewels into his sack, Mammoth wondered if she would show up this time. They were in her territory. If she didn't, it was either for old times' sake, or because she was too much of a coward.

She was the only one who got that he wasn't stupid. He wasn't Gizmo, sure, but he was good enough at other things. She helped him fit... and then she _left_.

Why? Some stupid boy? The Team was worth more than that, and she knew it. Couldn't just be about him.

Maybe she wanted to be good... he envied her that. He never had that chance.

But maybe she just wanted to get away from the losers.

Why did the bad guys always lose? He didn't get it. They had cooler powers than the heroes, and there were more of them.

They weren't even bad guys most of the time... really, at least half the time when the team hit a bank, they just took enough for groceries for a while. They did it in two bits: a big one for the Titans to find and show off, and a little one for them to grab to live on.

That one was Mammoth's idea one day when he was so hungry that everything hurt really bad. She said it was a good idea. That was the first time ever, and he was proud of it. Since then, they never went hungry... or almost never.

When she first joined the Titans, they'd been fine. She remembered what they needed and what was just extra. Now, she was forgetting that they had to eat.

It wasn't like they could get jobs... not them. Everyone knew them, saw them on the news, saw the criminal records and everything else. They didn't even have a real address to put on the papers... they just lived wherever was empty. Gizmo got the power going anywhere. No water, but that was okay. Water was free lots of places.

Didn't she remember living like this?

It was too bad. He never wanted to hit her, but now she just made him so _angry_. They wanted to live, and it was like she didn't want them to.

But they would find a way. The team always did. And Mammoth would stay with them.

He had never made it as a wise man... but he could cut it as a poor man stealing.

**AN:** This was beyond painful for a couple of reasons:

First of all, _**NICKELBACK**_. Not just Nickelback, but the most horrendously clichéd song from Nickelback.

Secondly, the person whose viewpoint fit most with it was Mammoth... which probably says something about Nickelback, but I'll leave that can of worms alone. In any case, that meant having to simplify complex thoughts into vocabulary befitting a fourth-grade education. I like flowery language and playing with style, and there's just no room for that sort of thing with someone as (academically) simple as Mammoth.

That said, I'm fairly happy with how this story resolved itself.

Also, I can't possibly express how much it hurt to leave a dangling preposition in this story.


	7. Chrome

**Warning:** Spoilers for Aftershock, obviously, and beyond that, there's a lot of darkness and some foul language. These things don't come out of Beast Boy's mouth incidentally.

**Chrome- VNV Nation**

The cave echoed with shuffling footsteps, scraping and dragging along the rock with reluctance. There was a slow and determined rhythm to them, like a self-imposed death march. Not long after the first sounds reached the cave's sole resident, a green figure game into view.

Beast Boy wasn't sure whether to be grateful to Raven or hate her for the permanently-lit path she had placed with her magic. It meant that the Titans could visit Terra at any hour of the day or night... and he was coming far too often at all hours.

Really, though, he would have come anyway; there just would have been more scraped knees involved.

He finally reached the statue of his... what was she to him? She had been everything, nothing, friend, almost-lover, enemy, Delilah to his Sampson. He snorted at the thought of himself, musclebound and hairless, blinded and put on display for Slade's pleasure. It actually seemed about right.

At least Sampson had probably gotten a kiss.

But he wasn't here to be bitter; he was here to try to reconcile the thoughts in his head with the girl who was standing there. How was he supposed to approach this, though? It wasn't like talking with his parents at the cemetery; they were dead, but the caskets were empty and the headstone had never been alive. Terra's statue was _her_, flesh and bone turned to rock... and he didn't even know if she was dead or alive in there. Maybe she could hear him... probably not.

"Maybe I should just ask you if you can hear me or not, eh?" he said with a forced chuckle that died in less than a second. "Then again, stone isn't exactly the best conductor of sound. SO MAYBE IF I TALK LOUDER, YOU'LL FINALLY HEAR ME AND COME BACK?" His hands were balled into fists, claws cutting through his gloves into his palms. It took quite a bit to get through Kevlar.

"Then again, I don't even know what I'd do if you did come back." He stared down at his feet. "I don't know if I'd beat you up or kiss you... maybe both at the same time. Sounds fun, doesn't it?"

Silence.

"Y'know, Terra, I really liked you. And I screwed up big time telling you that you didn't have any friends. I wish I'd told you the truth, but when I get hurt I say things too fast. I know what hurts, and I say it. If I hadn't said that, maybe you would have stayed. Then you'd be alive."

He raked his fingers through his hair, heedless of the scratches he left on his scalp. "I killed you, didn't I? I'm going to kill everyone I love, I think. First my parents, now you. The Doom Patrol's days are numbered if I come back to them, too. And everybody says it's not my fault but I know it is! They don't understand... you always understood me. Maybe you killed somebody too?" He walked up to the statue, a gleam in his eye. "Now, come on, you can tell me. I mean, you're dead now; it's not like they're gonna put a hunk of rock in jail."

A shaking began in his belly, growing to a laugh, then to a full-fledged shriek. Tears streaming from his eyes, Beast Boy fought to gain control of himself. "Nobody would think that was funny except you... and now not even you laugh at my jokes. Oh well... I know you would if you could."

As he ran his fingers over the statue's face, he paused. "You know, if I could have saved you from all of this... I don't know if I would have. I think I'd still have let you die. I hate you that much right now. But I think I love you too... I want to keep you in your room and bring you all your meals and have you be so grateful for everything and know you're safe all the time... but that's crazy, isn't it? Yeah... it's gotta be."

Terra said nothing; merely stared, expressionless, hands at her sides.

Resisting the urge to swipe a clawed hand across the statue's face, he stood stock still. "I think sometimes I come down here for my own good... but the things I say... well, I don't know if they're for me or you."

"I can still hear you screaming. The others said it lasted for just a second or two, but I heard it for longer. I can hear better than any of them; you know that. I heard how it lasted... your breath gave out, but you still needed to scream more. That was the sound that stuck with me." It was getting hard to stand, so he knelt. There was no conscious thought behind the process.

"Why did you have to leave me with all of this?" His voice was barely audible, even to his own ears. "I would have been fine if you had just stayed evil, stayed on one side or the other, but this... I don't know what to do with it all. I don't even know how much of what I loved about you is real and how much was a disguise you got from _him_."

The boy took a deep breath, trying to let it out smoothly and failing as it degenerated into a shuddering sob. "I could smell him on you." He tried to find words, but there were none. Mouthing a silent scream, he pounded and clawed at Terra's stone memory. "Why? Why did you give him everything when we never even kissed? God damn it, Terra... why? And _him_? Did he love you? Did he at least tell you he did?"

He scrubbed the back of one hand across his face, sniffling to rid himself of the evidence of his weakness. "Y'know... I think we used to have a lot in common, but maybe not so much anymore. I mean, I'm a superhero, which means I have lots of responsibilities and I do lots of cool stuff, but you... well, nowadays, you're just such a stoner."

The cackle that broke from his mouth would have scared away any living creatures if there had been any left in the cave. Tumbling backwards, he hit his head on the hard rock. He sat up and rubbed the back of his head. "Bad joke? Tough shit. You got my good jokes... you got everything. I have nothing left, Ter. I keep coming down here, hoping for something; I don't even know what. Maybe I hoped you'd hear me one day. But you know what? I'm still talking, and _YOU'RE NOT LISTENING_!"

Seething with rage, boiling over with grief, Garfield Logan fell apart at Terra's feet. There were no more words.

Minutes or hours later, he arose. He wiped his face clear of offending salt tracks and mucus, then dug in his pocket and pulled out a compact mirror. Flashing his trademark grin, he searched his eyes for any hint of a lie, any giveaway as to what lay beneath. Once he was satisfied, he closed the mirror and strode off towards the cave's entrance, never once looking back at the statue.

He promised himself he wouldn't be back.

That was as much of a lie as his smile.

**AN:** Releasing this without much editing; I didn't want to take away the raw emotion behind the dialogue. When I heard this song, I immediately thought of the aftermath of Aftershock. BB just couldn't have been okay, no matter what the rest of the team thought he might have felt. He could pull it together after Betrayal, certainly, but that's just a bandage on a gaping wound. It had to get lanced sometime.

This is the very first time I've written Beast Boy swearing, even mildly. He's just not that kind of person. It takes something truly terrible to pull that out of him... but what happened between Betrayal and the aftermath of Aftershock would have done it, in my mind.


	8. Welcome to the End

**AN:** Just a short little snippet as I wait for some beta reading on longer, heavier pieces. I keep coming back to the relationship between Terra and Beast Boy, especially centering around the betrayal. I can't help it; it's a breeding ground for so many varied emotions, and I love it.

**Disclaimer:** Despite the fact that Russia is now embracing capitalism, and I'm currently living there, I can't seem to get my hands on a slice of the DC Comics pie. Until I do, I don't own any of this or make money off of it.

**Welcome to the End- Celldweller**

Terra tried desperately to quell the trembling in her hands, to tell herself this would be for the best. At least she was saving Beast Boy from the same fate as the other Titans.

But why was it so important to save him? He had betrayed her secret, driven her away and into Slade's waiting arms. Yet somehow, she found her gut twisting at the idea of him dying at the hands of the robot army, praying she had escaped and never knowing the truth.

And what of Slade? She owed him everything. Her sense of obligation to him ran even deeper than her ties to the Titans. Still, his training had come to include certain... activities, and try as she might, she couldn't bring herself to enjoy that with him. Not that she was any stranger to such exchanges; nothing had ever been free or easy in her life. She couldn't help but think that fulfilling those duties would be much easier if she could just forget about what a certain green-skinned boy would think if he ever found out.

She was reminded once again in that moment that her heart wasn't made of stone as she so often liked to imagine: stone, she could control.

"I wish I didn't need you now," Terra whispered. She couldn't say for certain if the words were for Beast Boy or Slade, or both.


	9. A New Wound

**AN: **Robin is an interesting character to write when I can crack his armor enough to give him some humanity. He works so hard not to have any...

Also, I'm very much open to constructive criticism on this and all my other work. I'm guessing based on the single review last chapter that it might not have gone over so well, but I'm just shooting in the dark. If you have opinions, whether high or low, please speak up.

**Disclaimer:** Don't own anything related to Robin or the Teen Titans, and I don't make money off of it. If I owned them, I'd probably hand them over to great authors like Kryalla Orchid and IronRaven and just collect the royalties.

**A New Wound- AP2**

Now and then, Robin would stand in front of the mirror and run his fingers over the round, puckered scar on his right shoulder, feeling out the edges. It was such a small thing, really, and yet it had changed his life so drastically.

Physically, it hadn't hurt any worse than being stabbed or electrocuted or burned. He had been through quite a bit of pain as Robin, a fact to which Alfred could certainly testify. The poor man had spent countless hours with needle and thread just trying to keep the Boy Wonder in presentable costumes, and trying to salvage a post-patrol uniform had often been a lost cause.

Mentally and emotionally, though, that gunshot wound had been the worst blow the Joker had ever landed on him. With one bullet, the cackling psychopath had taken away years of trust between Robin and his mentor. Suddenly he was nine years old again in Batman's eyes, an innocent kid who couldn't be entrusted with his own safety. In the space of the trip back to the Batcave, Robin had gone from partner to liability.

Nothing could possibly have hurt worse than that.

Before his shoulder had even healed completely, Robin had arrived in Jump City, desperate to show his mentor that he could... what had it been, exactly? Take care of himself? None of the Jump villains were anywhere near the caliber of Gotham's criminals. Lead a team? Teamwork had never been important to the Batman.

In a sense, it was simple teenage rebellion, he supposed. Pure, honest, I-don't-need-you-anymore rebellion. It had certainly gone well, but did the end justify such petty beginnings?

He couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if the Joker's bullet had never touched him. Would he still be the person he was today? Would he have struck out on his own without the impetus?

Robin had taken his fractured self-image and turned it into strength; built a team and an identity beyond Batman's shadow, but he would always have this wound, and he would always wonder.


	10. Can't Relate

**Disclaimer: **All right, kids: let's review. I own a suitcase filled with Russian hats, matryoshka dolls, and a Soviet officer's uniform. This suitcase is currently sitting somewhere outside of Moscow waiting for me to come back and claim it. I don't own the Teen Titans or anything related.

**Can't Relate- The Exies**

Whenever Raven meditated, she kept her empathic shields up, but she was always sure to leave a little opening in them— something that would let the tiniest bit of emotion filter through. She had to do so in order to stay sane, after the Silence.

Previously, she had built her shields to be completely impenetrable during meditation; nothing interfered with her concentration more than stray emotions from others. But once, after hours of deep meditation to completely suppress her emotions, she had emerged to find she felt absolutely nothing. Even as she lowered her shields, she could feel no trace of emotion. The others had left for a quick trip to the grocery store, the note under her door informed her.

This was nothing shocking; she had specifically asked not to be disturbed, and they had honored her request. But the emotional Silence around her was something totally alien to her.

It should have scared her. She wanted it to scare her.

It didn't.

Instead, there was merely a detached sense of interest at the newfound knowledge. Analytical to a fault, she dropped her shields entirely and tried to feel something, anything.

Nothing happened.

Reflecting on it later, she would have given anything in that moment for terror to strike her and crack the mirrors, set the stove ablaze, tear the couch in half... but it never came.

The pilot light had gone out, and she was left without a way to restart the fire.

And so she stood in the middle of the common room, staring at everything, feeling nothing.

Half an hour later, the T-Car pulled into the Tower, and she could feel her friends' emotions once more. Like circulation rushing painfully back into a tied-up wrist, the emotions needled at her and wrought havoc with her powers. The couch finally did tear itself in half, and she rushed back to the safety of her shielded room, destruction following the trail of her cloak.

Beast Boy, having taken it upon himself to check on her, found her weeping in the far corner of her room. No sooner had he knelt down in front of her than her arms shot out to grab him. She sobbed into his chest for what seemed like an hour, unable to stop herself as she basked in his emotions. Confusion at her uncharacteristic behavior, sadness that she was in pain, protectiveness of her— all swirled around her and comforted her like a blanket that smelled like home.

When she had cried herself out, he leaned back and looked into her eyes. "If you don't want to tell me what that was, you never have to. But please... remember I'm here, even if you can't talk."

She never had told anyone, not even Beast Boy, but now she always kept a crack in her shields during periods of deep meditation, just in case. If she couldn't sense the emotions of others, she had to hold onto an infinitesimal sliver of her own feelings.

Her empathy, borrowed emotion though it might be, still made her feel alive; she never again wanted to live in Silence.

**AN:** The idea for the Silence struck me when I heard the line I borrowed from this song. I just love the thought of Raven clinging to others' emotions for fear of completely losing touch with reality.

Two stories so close to each other? Why, it's almost like I've been saving these things up for when I have time to edit them...


	11. Just in Case

**AN: **It's certainly been a while. I have quite a few pieces in limbo right now. Most are not quite finished; the words just aren't coming to match the ideas sufficiently. This came to me today and demanded to be written, as these things often do. As such, it's much shoddier workmanship than I generally put out, but it feels good to have an idea up and finished. Also, I have to give credit to Stumblefoot's piece, "The Waiting Wolf," for a fairly central idea. Read it and you'll recognize it.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own much of anything, and what I get paid for definitely isn't this.

**Just in Case— Tesla**

"Garfield Mark Logan, I swear by Azar, if you die, I will drag you back by your toenails!"

Raven swiped at her eyes, trying to clear away the saltwater marring her vision. As much as it clawed at her soul to see the twisted spears of rebar jutting out of Beast Boy's chest, she had to keep her mind and eyes clear. His life was riding on her now.

Fueled by such a massive rush of emotion, Raven could barely keep her powers from an instinctive reaction that would surely kill Beast Boy; even as she worked to slowly build a cocoon of energy around each bar so that she could phase them out of his body without doing further internal damage, she had to fight the urge to rip out the metal that was killing her newfound lover. So little energy was required for this task, yet it was agonizingly slow work, largely due to the massive shunt she had to maintain throughout the process. The space two feet around their bodies was utter, sterile calm; the ten feet outside of that were caught in a black maelstrom.

It was like trying to water an orchid with Niagara Falls.

Interminable seconds passed, marked by Beast Boy's ragged breaths and the pounding of Raven's heart. Finally, encased in black energy, the rebar floated free of his chest and imbedded itself in the concrete, leaving behind three jagged holes in his chest. One lung had been punctured by two of the poles, but all of his other major organs were unharmed. Taking a deep breath, Raven concentrated on pulling out the blood that had accumulated inside his lung, knitting together the displaced flesh, pulling muscle fibers back together, reattaching severed nerves. The pain was nearly unbearable to absorb, and she bit her lip to keep from screaming.

The blue glow subsided from her fingers, and three puckered patches of light green skin stood out against the brown-red mess that was the front of Beast Boy's uniform. Raven collapsed, lying at Garfield's side just as she had in the wee hours of that very morning. She refused to look away from his face, though, until she saw his eyes open.

Beast Boy gave her a weak smile and brought his arm to rest on her hip. "Hey there, beautiful. What'd I miss?"

Raven slapped his hand away and rose to her knees. "Don't you dare start joking, Gar! If you had died, I..." She closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to clear away the tears that were beginning anew. A gloved hand on her face drew her gaze to Beast Boy's eyes. The next thing she knew, they were locked in a desperate kiss. Beast Boy was alive. Her Garfield was still with her. Anything else was inconsequential.

A tap on her shoulder brought her head up. "Can't this wait?"

Robin's eyes were as apologetic as the mask could convey. "Sorry, Raven, but not really. We need you to bring Adonis back from... wherever you sent him."

Chastened, Raven closed her eyes and chanted. A few seconds later, a red battle suit materialized on the concrete emitting a high-pitched keening sound.

Cyborg approached, sonic cannon at the ready. Turning over the figure with a foot, he found their foe whimpering and gibbering to himself.

"So dark... so cold... can't feel... am I dead? Why is it so dark?" The young man's eyes were wide, tears mingling with the drool on his chin.

Robin's posture conveyed his displeasure. "Raven, you're going to have some serious explaining to do. This damage may be perm—"

In a flash, Raven was on her feet, staring up at her leader with venom in her eyes. "No. He nearly killed Beast Boy. I apologize for _nothing_."

The Boy Wonder's jaw clenched. "I'll have to take this up with Batman."

"Fine. Go. I'll meet you back at the Tower." She knelt back at Beast Boy's side, taking his hand in her own.

Stiff-legged, Robin turned on his heel and made his way to the R-Cycle, followed closely by Starfire, who shot Raven a look of approval before mounting the bike and wrapping her arms around Robin's waist. By the time they finished the ride back to the Tower, the warrior princess would most likely be able to soften the sharper edges of her lover's anger.

Cyborg's shadow loomed over the pair on the concrete even as he knelt. "He'll come around, Raven. You don't have anything to be sorry for. I'm just glad you beat me to the punch; your way, Rustbucket's still alive."

"If I ever lost him... if I ever lost any of you..." Raven's voice trembled.

"Yeah, I know. We're family." He stood. "Preliminary scans show he's stable. Get him to the med bay, and I'll be down to check on him as soon as I get Adonis into custody and drive back." Cyborg hesitated for a moment, then started walking toward the T-Car. "I think I might be a while. Maybe I'll take the scenic route."

"Victor?" Raven waited for the giant young man to turn. "Thank you."

Enveloping Garfield in her soul-self, Raven teleported to the floor of the medical bay, still holding her lover's hand.

"Now, let's get you up on a table. As much as you need rest, the floor's probably not the ideal place for—"

A soft snore interrupted her. Glancing at the changeling, she saw that he was fast asleep, and most likely had been for quite some time.

Raven couldn't help a tiny smile. "I suppose you've earned a bit of sleep." Lifting the green boy with her powers, she deposited him on the medical bed, then dragged a chair over to sit next to him. She slipped into her familiar meditative pose, hoping to get her ragged emotions back into a manageable state before he woke.

Just as she was beginning to find her center, something slimy crawled into her ear.

In a room with so much sensitive electronic equipment, it was really quite fortunate that only one of the overhead lightbulbs exploded.

"What in the name of Az— Beast Boy!" Raven scrubbed at her ear with a hand, trying to rid herself of the horrendous sensation.

The green boy at least had the decency to look sheepish. "Saying your name wasn't working. A wet willie is the next logical step."

"A wet willie is _never_— never mind. You're insufferable."

"I dunno, Rae, I think I did a little suffering today. Can't I get some sympathy kisses?" Oh Azar, he was starting with the puppy dog eyes.

"Not if you resort to blackmail. And if you ever, _ever_ do something like that again, I will kill you myself."

"Kind of extreme for a wet willie. Not a fan?"

She sighed. "You know what I mean."

"Well yeah, but it's not like I woke up today and thought, 'Hey, I think I really need some rebar sticking through my—'"

"Shut _up_! Shut up shut up shut up..." Raven's fists were clenched and glowing with black energy.

Beast Boy immediately relented and took hold of her hands. "It's okay, Rae. Look. I'm here. I'm fine. See?" He placed her right hand over his heart. "Still there."

The black glow subsided, but Raven still couldn't get her breathing under control. "Oh, Gar... I thought..." She closed her eyes and saw him shifting over and over again, elk to dinosaur to cheetah, unable to rid himself of the steel poles jutting through his chest in human form.

"I know. But you saved me, Rae. You did it. I'm here. Safe."

They sat there with no concept of time, simply grateful for the other's presence. Finally, as was his custom, Beast Boy broke the silence.

"Do you believe there's a heaven, Rae?"

She snorted. "My heritage mandates that I believe in heaven. You can't have demons without angels."

"I guess... but how do I know I'll get there? It's not like I have a road map... and I've done some bad things. Especially with the Doom Patrol. I might tell you about some of them one day, but I'm not ready yet."

"Gar, I'm certain your spot in heaven is reserved, right next to Abbott and Costello and every other comedian with blindingly bad puns." Her gaze shifted downward. "My place, though... I'm pretty much guaranteed to go the other way."

"You're kidding, right? You have more of a chance at heaven than any of us, Rae."

"Uh, earth to Garfield: I'm half demon. Not exactly heaven material."

That awful, wonderful smirk slid across his face. "Tell me, what exactly is a demon? Two word definition."

"A demon is a fallen..." Raven stopped, eyes wide.

"Exactly. Fallen angel." His eyes were shining. "And what makes a fallen angel who's fought for good all her life any different from a regular angel who started out on the right side of the clouds?"

"But... my father is—"

"Not you. Not by a long shot. And I, for one, am glad of that. I mean, first off, the antlers would get in the way of this." He leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers.

When they finally pulled apart, Beast Boy reached up to caress her face.

"Rae... just in case I don't make it to heaven, I want to give you a message for when you get there. I want you to thank whoever's up there for giving me an angel of my own. That's more heaven than I've ever expected, and I can't tell you how grateful I am for it."

Raven gestured for him to lean forward. As he leaned in again, lips pursed for another kiss, she flicked him soundly between the eyes.

"Ow!" Beast Boy rubbed at his forehead. "What'd I do?"

"If you don't end up there, I am personally going to break down the gates of wherever it is you're staying, grab you by your pointy ears, and drag you to heaven. Understood?"

He gulped. "Yes, Ma'am."

Raven gave him a little smile. "Good boy. Now come here." Grabbing his face with both hands, she dragged him in for another kiss.


	12. Schadenfreude

**AN:** This is the fastest I've ever written anything, especially considering that I typed it on my phone while waiting to go see the sunrise over the Grand Canyon. It may be rough, but the idea wouldn't let me sleep until I had gotten it out.

**Disclaimer:** The only thing related to DC Comics or the Teen Titans that I own is a Robin tank top. I don't make any money off of this, but the tank top gets me decent tips at the bar sometimes.

**Schadenfreude- Aesthetic Perfection**

Raven was the Tower's resident enigma, and she liked it that way. Over the years, the other Titans had come up with their own explanations for many of Raven's quirks, and she was unlikely to ever correct them.

So it was with her constant belittling of Beast Boy.

Robin saw it as a way to keep balance in the team's morale; it was a textbook psychological projection for their leader, boring and plain as the Boy Wonder himself.

Cyborg believed it was a squabble between older sister and younger brother. Again, predictable for the young man who had lost everything and was desperate to play house with his teammates in order to achieve some semblance of normalcy.

Starfire insisted it was a precursor to romance, as she had seen in so many saccharine films and novels. The alien princess saw the brightest hopes in the darkest of places; it was almost cute in its childlike naivete.

Oddly enough, Beast Boy himself had never voiced an opinion on the matter.

Reality, however, was as simple as addiction.

The swirl of Beast Boy's emotions in reaction to an insult formed an empathic ambrosia for Raven— keen, raw, and exquisite. And unlike the others, he always bounced back, ready to have his emotions harvested once more. Time and time again, the green boy would lie down and take the beating; it was what he did best.

He was Raven's golden goose of pain and humiliation.

If the truth were ever exposed, she would be quick to fault her demonic half. So simple, really, and the others would readily accept the excuse. The truth of it, though, was far more terrible.

Nothing Raven ever did or felt would be more human than her addiction to watching another's suffering.


	13. Goodbye in Her Eyes

**Goodbye in Her Eyes- Zac Brown Band**

He had known from before the moment their lips met that she had already found what she had been looking for, and it was not him.

Nonetheless, he was content to let her take what she wished from him; he didn't have as much to offer her as others he could name, and it gave him a small twinge of pride that she wanted what little he did have to give.

There were no illusions here in this kiss of convenience. He had no chance at her heart, and he was content in that knowledge.

Their hands roamed, exploring the unfamiliar with a degree of trepidation. As he fought to rein his animal side, he only hoped that she would remember to be gentle with him as well. She could break him in an instant, if she so desired.

As they pulled apart, ever so slightly dazed, their eyes drifted open at the same time. Two shades of green met, and before a moment passed they both fell into fits of giggles.

"_That was most... pleasant._" Starfire's Swahili was ever so slightly awkward to the ear, but all the more endearing for the alien quality.

Beast Boy grinned, still a bit dizzy from the kiss. "_Yeah. Very._"

"_Thank you, friend. I will enjoy your language, and especially the opportunity for the sharing of secrets between just us._" The princess placed her hand on his head and scratched behind his pointed ears. Oh, that was heaven. He was never, ever going to regret having told her about that spot...

A throat being cleared directly next to them sent them flying apart in shock. Beast Boy turned to see the Boy Wonder standing no more than a foot from him, arms crossed and giving them the Bat Glare.

Well, perhaps he was going to regret it a bit.

"Beast Boy, you have five seconds to explain to me _precisely_ what is going on here." Robin's voice had somehow brought the temperature of the room down to that of a meat locker... and Beast Boy was fairly certain that if he didn't start talking, he'd be ending up on a hook.

"Uh, well, y'see, Starfire and me... and I... y'know... uh, we're both single." He flashed a weak grin, hoping that he wouldn't have to continue.

The further furrowing of Robin's brow bludgeoned that hope to death and began doing unspeakable things with its carcass.

"Er... well, she's always wanted to learn Swahili, and so... yeaaaah. Tamaranean language lessons. Just like the one you got, remember?"

Judging by the pulsing vein in Robin's forehead and the particular shade of purple he was turning, that was precisely the wrong thing to say.

Figuring he couldn't possibly make himself any deader than he was going to be, Beast Boy swallowed and went for broke. "Look, Robin, she wanted to learn Swahili, I wanted to help her out, and it's not like either of us has someone else we should be kissing, right?"

Robin sputtered for a moment, hands shaking, then finally managed coherent sentences. "I can't believe you would take advantage of Star like this, Beast Boy! It's wrong, and you know it!"

"Hey, hold up! What's wrong about a language transfer between friends?" Beast Boy didn't have to feign his indignation.

"Friends don't put their hands on another friend's..." The Boy Wonder's arms began flailing around.

"_Grobflork_?" Starfire supplied.

"Yes! What she said!" Spittle flew from Robin's lips as he pointed wild-eyed at Starfire.

The Tamaranean smiled sweetly. "Well, friend Beast Boy does have a very nice _grobflork_, and I have long been curious as to how it might feel. It is only fair and polite that he should reciprocate if he chooses."

Robin's eyes turned to Starfire, and he began emitting the strangest sounds Beast Boy had ever heard in the entire animal kingdom.

Floating closer to Robin and touching his shoulder, the princess moved in for the kill. "Do not be dismayed, friend Robin. I also harbor much curiosity toward your _grobflork_. Shall we, too, partake in the same activities?"

Eyes bulging, mouth working frantically to produce some coherent form of communication, their team leader let out a scream and ran for his room.

When his door had closed, Beast Boy and Starfire burst into laughter anew.

"Success?" he asked after he had regained some of his composure.

"Indeed," she replied. "Thank you, friend Beast Boy!" Leaving him with a kiss on the cheek, Starfire floated off to her own room.

A pointed cough behind him made Beast Boy jump yet again. What was it, Sneak Up and Cough Day?

"I hope you're proud of yourself," Raven said, her normal deadpan expression somehow slightly... different.

Shrugging, Beast Boy ran a hand through his hair. "What? It's obvious he likes her too. He just needs a swift kick in the butt sometimes to get him going."

Raven arched an eyebrow. "And of course _you_ had to be the one to kiss Starfire."

He tilted his head in confusion. "Well, yeah. I had Swahili as an excuse. Plus, it's not like there's anyone who likes me right now, so I don't have to worry about someone other than Robin getting jealous."

The pale sorceress's face twitched. For her, that was approximately the equivalent of screaming and throwing something across the room.

"Uh, Rae?"

Taking a deep breath, Raven turned and strode off to her room, but not before a black hand of energy formed and smacked Beast Boy soundly behind the head.

As Beast Boy rubbed his head, alone in the common room, he wondered what on earth he had done to deserve that one.

**AN:** It was time for some fluffiness. The song itself is sad, but for some reason this story was what came to mind, and personally, I like it better that way. Also, I screwed up royally on something and had to make up a word for butt.


	14. End of the Afternoon

**AN:** Inspiration is sort of flowing oddly at the moment. The things I want to finish, I can't, but the things that just pop into my head work themselves out. The song itself is from a singer whose CD I found in a bargain bin. Possibly the best dollar I spent that month. He captures a variety of relationships with striking clarity. **Edit: Went back and fixed an awkward repeat of a phrase that had been bugging me.**

**Disclaimer:** I'm a bartender. I make my money getting people trashed on booze, not words. I also don't own much of anything worth noting here, including Teen Titans.

**End of the Afternoon- Curtis Stigers**

As the lines of data compiled, blurring past his eyes by the thousands, Cyborg once again felt a niggling sensation that something was not quite right. Nothing was wrong with the program; of that, he was certain. Over the past week, nearly all of the Titan supercomputer's vast processing power had been focused on running simulations, exploring every conceivable angle and outcome of the problem they faced.

Even as a statue, Terra Markov continued to confuse and torment her former teammates.

Since the night they had returned home from the cave, the team had been searching for a way to bring the geomancer back from within the stone that held her prisoner. Raven was scouring spell books, Robin was consulting with the Justice League, Starfire was in contact with Tamaran's finest scientists, and Cyborg was running simulations of every possible cure that came to mind. Beast Boy had asked for some time away from duty, and they had all thought it best to oblige him.

No, the program was flawless, though it had failed thus far to produce the desired result. Still, the nagging feeling in the back of his mind persisted, and he found himself shifting from foot to foot, trying to discover its source. He ruled out hunger, thirst, and any number of other causes. Finally, he threw his hands up in frustration and headed for the roof. _When in doubt, fresh air_.

The elevator opened upon the hunched figure of Beast Boy.

The young man was sitting cross-legged, a tube of epoxy and a plastic bucket at his side. His gloves lay next to him. He was gluing...

Oh no.

"Beast Boy... man, why didn't you come see me?"

His best friend turned his head and looked up, red-rimmed eyes gleaming with an aspiration to be empty. "You were doing something important. I can't help her. I'm useless."

"You're not useless, BB. Once you're back on your feet, you can help us—"

"Help you what? You've got your computer, Raven's got her books, Star's got a whole planet on call, Robin's got the Justice League, and what do I have? I can turn into animals. I'm sure that's gonna help a whole lot." Shoving his hand into the bucket, he came back up with mirror shards imbedded in his skin. Picking them out and dropping them on the ground, he resumed his work gluing the bloody pieces into a mosaic on the interior of another heart-shaped box, this one made of what appeared to be remnants of destroyed Slade Bots. His hands were covered in bleeding cuts and half-dried epoxy, giving them the appearance of peeling, rotting flesh.

"B, just stop for a second." Cyborg knelt by his friend, placing a hand on his shoulder, only to have it thrown off.

"No! I have to do something. As long as I'm doing something, I don't have to think about the fact that I killed her!" Beast Boy's eyes were wild, manic.

Victor was taken aback. "What do you mean, you killed her? You were the reason she chose the right side in the end. If anything, you saved her."

The green boy slammed his fist on the pavement, leaving behind a streak of blood. "You don't get it. Nobody gets it! If it weren't for what I told her, she might still be alive! I killed her just like I killed my parents!"

Looking Beast Boy directly in the eye, Cyborg spoke quietly, trying to keep his voice level. "You remember how I got like this, right, B?"

Beast Boy nodded, confused but somewhat calmer for the moment.

"So tell me... did I kill my Mom?"

The younger boy's face fell. "Of course not, Cy. You didn't have any control of that car. There was nothing you could have done."

"Same goes for you. You didn't kill your parents, and you didn't kill Terra. You had no control of either of those situations, so stop blaming yourself."

Beast Boy closed his eyes growled, a deep, prolonged vibration that rose in pitch and intensity. Suddenly, his eyes snapped open and the growl became a primal yell as the boy launched himself at Cyborg. Victor was too surprised to react, and only regained his wits when he heard his best friend sobbing into his metal shoulder, arms thrown around his neck.

Victor often envied others their ability to lose track of time; his electronic components never allowed him that luxury. He knew that it was exactly four minutes and eleven seconds before Beast Boy managed to stop crying and pull away.

"You know, Cy," he said as he scrubbed a hand across his face, heedless of the bloody streaks he left behind, "The hardest part of all this is that she wasn't just good or bad. I can't get this back and forth thing straight in my head. If I could just patch it all up with a sugar coat and a ray of hope, or even completely write her off as a lost cause, it would be so much easier."

Cyborg nodded. "I know, B, I know. There were times when I was sure she'd given herself completely over to Slade—"

A bitter, hacking laugh burst from Beast Boy's mouth, as though he was choking on some horrible truth and was unsure whether to spit it out or swallow it and let it eat him alive from inside. After his hysteria subsided, he looked up at Victor again, a nervous look on his face. "Sorry. I... I can't explain why that's so funny. Go ahead."

After a moment of uncomfortable shifting, Cyborg decided to continue. "Ok... But when it really mattered, she made the right choice. We all have good and bad in us in varying degrees, but she saved you, she saved the Titans, and she saved Jump. I don't know about you, but I have to let that be enough for me."

Beast Boy let out a deep, shuddering sigh. "Yeah, I guess that's kind of what I feel too. I just... it's hard to sort it out on my own."

"Then don't." Cyborg put his hand on Beast Boy's shoulder, and this time it was not batted away. "You're my best friend, BB. You can come to me anytime, for whatever you need. If you need advice, I'll do the best I can. If you just need to vent, I'll listen and won't say a word till it's all over. And if you need a distraction..." Cyborg grinned. "Then I'll be happy to whip your scrawny green butt at every video game we've got till all you can remember is the sweet taste of Cyborg gaming supremacy."

A smile found its way onto Beast Boy's face. It was shaky and fleeting, but it was genuine. "Thanks, Cy."

"Anytime, Grass Stain. Now let's get downstairs, patch up your hands, and fire up the big screen." The two stood and walked into the elevator, leaving the heart-shaped box and bucket of mirror shards behind.

"Say, you said _any_thing I need, right, Cy?" Beast Boy's voice had regained some of its impish tone. "Well, what if I was in desperate need of kicking your butt in Mega Monkeys?

As the elevator closed, Victor cringed. "Okay, _almost_ anything. A man's gotta keep some of his dignity."

Seated in the lotus position on the common room couch, Raven permitted herself a moment of satisfaction. Her talents didn't lie in comforting, and any attempt she made to comfort Beast Boy under the circumstances would almost certainly have left him in an even worse state, but she could always give the right person a nudge.

After all the times the green boy had been there for her, it was the least she could do.


	15. Don't Stop Me Now

**AN: **Well, here's unfamiliar territory for me. Never written this pairing, though I've seen them around quite a bit. This song is just too perfect for him, so I had to dip my toe into the unknown. Also, there's a bit of minor swearing.

**Don't Stop Me Now- Queen**

Jinx had been screaming her head off for the past forty miles.

Of course, that had only been about thirty seconds.

As scenery streaked by, she wondered what the Doppler effect was doing to the sound of her voice. Would the near-simultaneous approaching and retreating sound waves even out into a single scream? Would the sounds be too high and too low to hear and only be punctuated by a split second of shrieking?

Her reverie was cut short by the realization that she had stopped screaming. Maybe this wasn't so bad after _oh god_ they were headed straight for that cliff and Kid Flash wasn't making any attempt to dodge it! He would hit and vibrate through but she would just be squished into pink Jinxy splatters on the cliff face and _ohgodohgod_...

She blinked out of reflex, and the next thing she saw was bright blue ahead, orange stone beneath her...

"_Walleeeeeee_! No verticals! I told you no verticals!"

The laughter that answered her was so pure, so sweet, so utterly infuriating that she was going to slap him silly... just as soon as he got them back on solid ground.

"I do _not_ like defying the laws of gravity, Wally!" The tinge of fear in her voice was embarrassing, but damn it all, they were facing the sky, nothing but his super speed keeping them from falling who knew how far and _ohgodohgodohgod_ why was he _slowing down_?

They crawled up nearly to the top of the cliff, then hung in the air for the briefest of moments.

Then the ridge began getting further and further away.

"Anything you say, babe! Gravity's back!" That stupid, childish little...

"Okay, okay! I lied! Defy gravity! Defy gravity! Make it stop pleeeeurk!" Her teeth clicked together as they surged upward at Mach 3, his powers absorbing most of the blowback from the sudden acceleration. In a split second, they were on the cliff top, she in his arms, tears gathered at the corners of her eyes and legs shaking.

Safe. They were safe. She was...

Kid Flash flinched as she pounded at his chest, calling him every bad name she could remember and a few combinations she came up with on the spot. Eventually she'd land a solid hit and get him to drop—

Or kiss her. Yeah, okay, this was definitely a good option. His lips were always so soft, and she could tell he made a conscious effort to take his time with her and savor the moment. Her arms twined around his neck, and she felt her feet being lowered to touch the ground. The kiss lingered, and when he finally broke away, she wasn't sure how much of the shaking in her legs she could still blame on their trip. Probably not much.

"Still mad?" He asked.

She folded her arms, but didn't move to take his hands off her hips. "Yeah. Y'know, you can't distract me from the point I was making just by scaring the bejeezus out of me. We haven't done anything romantic in weeks, Wally, and I'm kinda feeling unwanted."

He sighed. "I know, babe. It's just having the whole Titans network together in Jump, and before that we were so busy breaking up that gang, and before that—"

"I know, Flash. I don't blame you. It's just... every now and then, I need to feel a little special."

"Of course you're special, Jinxie! I know sometimes I suck at making sure you know it, but..." He shifted a bit, searching for words. "Oh, hell, just let me show you. "

Before she could open her mouth, a red and white checkered blanket appeared on the ground, an overflowing picnic basket and a metal bucket atop it.

Kid Flash stood nervously to the side, hopping from foot to foot. "I've kinda been planning this all day. I was going to wait an hour for the perfect timing, but then it came up, so... yeah." He gestured for her to take a seat as he unpacked the basket.

"Strawberries from Oregon, cherries from Washington, a loaf of bread from that little bakery in Central City where we had our first real date..."

The food piled up, delicacies from around the world, each one a reminder of a moment they had shared.

He took a seat next to her, leg touching hers as he pulled a bottle from an ice bucket. "There are a couple more things coming... but the last one for now is my favorite champagne from France."

Jinx was shellshocked, but she couldn't help a giggle. "Wally! We're still underage. Am I turning you to the dark side?"

He shrugged. "We're legal in France. I'm just bringing the party here."

"And why here?"

Looking away, he mumbled something and turned pink.

"What?"

He turned back to her and tried to meet her eyes. "It's the best sunset anywhere within a minute from Jump at less than Mach 3. I know you don't like going faster than that."

It was just too much. She couldn't help the tears welling up in her eyes. "Thank you, Wally. This is all so... perfect."

He looked straight at her, and those vast pools of blue melted her. "You deserve everything I can give you and more, Jinx. There is no one else I'd rather share the whole world with." He pulled her in for a kiss, and time flew by.

As the sun began to dip, he checked his watch and told her to wait as he disappeared. A minute later, he reappeared with a box of sushi.

"Hiro says hi," he remarked as he popped a piece of tuna nigiri in her mouth.

Jinx's eyes bulged. He had gone to their favorite restaurant in _Tokyo_ for this? It tasted absolutely fresh, which meant...

"Before you ask, yeah. Phoned it in and asked him to have it ready in advance. Dessert's not quite so far from home, though."

Okay, it was official. She had the most romantic boyfriend in the entire world.

Once they had filled their bellies, he lay with his head in her lap as she ran her fingers through her hair, both of them watching the sunset... well, if she had to be completely honest, they spent more time staring at each other, but the sunset was beautiful too.

The sun's final rays disappeared, and he produced a blanket from somewhere. "Back in a sec."

When he reappeared, he was wearing a pair of oven mitts, and in his hands was what the Titans had unanimously declared the most glorious pie in two galaxies.

"Starfire was going to steal you for "the girl talk" tonight, but as soon as I told her what I had planned, she insisted on baking us a zorkaberry pie for dessert and rescheduling the girls' night for tomorrow." He grinned. "Personally, I have no objections."

Together, they made it through the whole pie. If anyone asked, Kid Flash ate most of it. That was the story, and she was sticking to it. And she totally didn't growl at him and stab his finger with the fork when he tried to snatch the last bite.

As they lay under the stars, covered in the blanket, utterly at peace in each other's company, Jinx looked over at her boyfriend. "Y'know, maybe on the way back, we could... go a little faster. If you want."

He pulled her in for a kiss. "I knew it! We'll make a supersonic woman of you yet."

**AN:** I'm fairly sure that if it's not canon, KryallaOrchid created zorkaberry pie. Seriously, read the woman's stuff.


	16. Eine Frau Spricht Im Schlaf

**AN:** This one comes from a song based off of a German poem by Erich Kästner (or Kaestner, if you're not overly fond of umlauts). I highly recommend both. Also, I neglected to mention previously that this story comes before Raven's "daddy issues" come to light.

**Disclaimer:** Don't own, don't make money, don't sue.

**Eine Frau Spricht Im Schlaf- Oomph!**

Jump City had no right to be this hot, summer notwithstanding. Even the nights were unbearable for the residents of Titans Tower, and none suffered more from the heat than Beast Boy.

His animal instincts were much more at peace when he slept as far above the ground as possible, hence the bunk beds, but that was precisely where the hot air collected. Therefore, his window was open as wide as possible, and he slept on the floor beneath the windowsill. He was certain Robin would have a litter of kittens over the security risks if he ever found out, but at the moment, it was too hot for Beast Boy to care.

Grumbling and stripping off all but his boxers, he splayed out on the ground, trying to throw off as much heat as possible.

A noise floated in through his window, and he was on his feet in a flash. That whimper was distinctly Raven, and she wasn't the whimpering type. Something was seriously wrong.

Morphing into a hummingbird and flitting the few feet over to Raven's room, Beast Boy found an open window. That was bad. Raven _never_ left her window open.

The whimpering continued, and Beast Boy shot inside, all warnings and threats thrown to the wind. Shifting to a wolf in the middle of her room, he filtered through the scent of incense and Raven to find the intruder.

There was nothing.

It was then that Beast Boy noticed something that he had overlooked in his haste to protect Raven: she was sleeping.

A fine sheen of sweat covered her body, moonlight making it glisten in a way that appealed to his animal nature more than he would ever admit. Her leotard had been cast aside, leaving her only in...

If Beast Boy had been capable of blushing as a wolf, he would have turned from green to bright purple. As it was, he was preparing to shift back to a hummingbird and high-tail it out of there. He didn't need to know that Raven wore only _that_ under her leotard.

Just as he began to clear his mind and begin the transformation, a whisper from Raven stilled him.

"Why don't you kill me faster?" Her voice was plaintive, laden with emotions she could never express in her waking hours. He was transfixed by that voice.

"Wait... makes it worse." She clutched at her pillow. "Breaking through! Soon... start t' love them." The sorrow on her face melted his heart.

He had to wake her up... but how? He had no right to be in her room, and he would never survive her knowing he'd seen her like this. Squelching the thought that he go back to his room and swear never to wake up in the middle of the night again, he sat wracking his brain for a solution, until her next words drove him to action.

"Don't wanna kill them... Father."

A hummingbird tore from her room like a lightning bolt, alighting on the adjoining room's windowsill and shifting back into Beast Boy. Summoning up every painful memory he could think of, he let forth a stentorian yell.

As he sat on the floor, sheets splayed around him, the green boy fought to hold onto the fear and pain and rage, struggled to keep it as a mask for his true intentions. He prayed her empathy would be fooled when she scanned his room and went back to a hopefully dreamless sleep.

He was not expecting a cloaked Raven to come flying in through his window, nor the brief flutter of said cloak that showed him a distinct lack of leotard. Glowing energy at the ready, she swept her eyes across his room. Finding nothing, she turned to him.

"Care to explain?" There was a harsh edge to her normal monotone.

Beast Boy gave her a nervous grin. "Really bad dreams?"

Hands lowering, she closed her eyes and nodded slowly. "Welcome to the club."

"Well, I don't really feel like going back to sleep to see the sequel." He stood. "I'm gonna go get some water. And maybe a shower. Wanna join me?"

Wait. Something was wrong with that...

"Oh crap! I mean for the water. Not the shower. Not that I wouldn't... uhhh... you know... I... am just shutting up now."

Raven's hands were over her eyes.

"Uhh... Raven?"

"Clothes, Beast Boy."

He cocked his head in confusion. "What do you mean, clothes? You've got your cloak on, so it's not like I can see _OH_ I am so so sorry I'm gonna put on some pants now _sorry_!"

After he had hopped into the nearest pair of pants, nearly making new holes in the process, he gave the all clear signal, and they wandered out his door to the kitchen.

Ten minutes later, they sat opposite each other at the table, tall glasses of water clutched in their hands. Neither of them had made a sound since sitting down.

"So... wanna talk about it?" Oddly enough, Raven was the first to speak.

Beast Boy squeaked. "Uhhh... not really. You?"

Raven sighed. "Have you ever... known something bad was coming? Something horrible... and no matter what, there's no way to stop it. So instead of waiting... you start wishing it would come sooner. Just to get it over with."

"No." The green boy's voice was hard as steel. "There's _always_ hope. And even if there's not, you live like there is."

"You don't understand—"

"No, you don't understand!" Beast Boy barely restrained himself from slamming his fist down on the table. Taking a deep breath, he continued. "I should be dead right now, from a hundred different things, but one in particular. I should have died before I was ever a superhero, before I was ever Beast Boy." He pulled off a glove, staring at his hand. "There's no cure. That's what everyone told me. But if I had given up, if my parents had given up, I would never have met any of you."

Raven sat and stared, eyes watering. The sound of shattering glass came from the common room.

"I don't know the details, Raven, but I know one thing's for sure: we will never, ever give up. We will always be there to help you."

Dark energy surrounded the empath, and she faded into nothing, leaving behind rippling water in a glass.

Now it was Beast Boy's turn to sigh. Draining both glasses in gulps, he placed them by the sink and headed for his room. He'd sleep in late; tonight he would be listening to be sure Raven's nightmares stayed away.


	17. Morketid

**AN:** This one took a couple versions. I finally sided with this version because it wasn't as stomach-turningly melodramatic.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own the rights to anything. I have the right to remain silent, but I rarely use it.

**Mørketid- Panzer Ag**

It had all started in a fairly innocuous manner; even in hindsight, the signs hadn't been anything they could have interpreted. It was all just too strange. As they stared at the gouges in the wall, though, they all found themselves wishing they could have known... and they wondered what they could do now.

It hadn't been that much of a shock to Raven when she found Beast Boy rummaging through her stash of vitamins. After all, he seemed to regard everything else of hers as his own personal property; why not a bottle of nutritional supplements? She had intended to scold him for strewing the bottles across the counter, but the crazed look in his eyes had given her pause. With a brief mention of going to find some iron pills and a wave, he was gone, and by the time he returned from the store, the incident had been forgotten. Beast Boy was always inconsiderate; she expected nothing less of him at this point.

Cyborg was accustomed to his best friend's eccentricities. Really, "Do you have any old pennies, Cy?" was one of the most harmless things the boy had asked him recently. He didn't even bat an eyelash as the Grass Stain sorted through the little pile he had on his nightstand, mumbling something about 1982. Chances were good that this plot involved a moped and some gerbils, as usual, and that it would be abandoned somewhere in the early planning stages. That was just how Beast Boy was.

Of all the Titans in the tower, Beast Boy had always received Starfire's displays of affection with the most enthusiasm and reciprocation. She had been rather surprised, though, when he became... increasingly enthusiastic. Her hug of morning greeting had been returned in kind, and she was delighted to find him squeezing extra hard. It had been a bit shocking when he began nuzzling at her hair and sniffing, as she had seen in motion pictures that this was an action generally preceding intimate relations, but nonetheless she dismissed it as a sign of deepest friendship. She could not hold back a surprised yelp, though, when his tongue ran along her neck.

The moments that followed this were not the most clear of her memories. The two of them had broken apart, Beast Boy's dazed look giving way to shock and panic. He turned a shade of deep green that Starfire knew to be a blush, and began apologizing profusely. She nodded and murmured something that might have been in Tamaranean, so profound was her surprise. Beast Boy turned and began walking back to his room, but was stopped by Robin standing in the hall. Her newly-announced boyfriend did not look happy.

Robin, of course, remembered every second.

"Beast Boy, you have some serious explaining to do _right now_," he said through clenched teeth.

Running a hand behind his head and tugging at his hair, the green boy let out a nervous chuckle. "Umm, I don't suppose you'd forget all this if I told you that you wouldn't understand but I'm really sorry?" His mouth was barely moving as he spoke.

Now Robin's fists clenched as well. "Not a chance. And why are you talking funny? What's in your mouth?"

"Ummm... nothing. Look, I'm sorry, and I swear I'll explain tomorrow, but today I—" Beast Boy's next words were cut off by Robin's thumb and middle finger smashing into his cheeks, forcing out three flat discs, which clattered on the floor.

Apprentice of the Batman or not, Robin was completely baffled. "Pennies?" The words had scarcely left his mouth when a gloved hand grabbed him by the throat and pinned him against the wall. Instinct brought him out of the changeling's grasp within a split second, and they rolled into the common room to face off against each other, Beast Boy snarling and circling.

Beast Boy's eyes were gleaming, crazed. "You know, Robin, we all have problems sometimes. I try to deal with mine responsibly. So a few times a year, when the monster in me has all sorts of cravings it's screaming at me to satisfy, I try to stay away from people. That's why I asked you for time off. But since you _denied_ that request, I had to do some research." Tugging at his gloves with his teeth, the green young man tossed them aside and flexed his claws. "I figured the key component of what I need most is iron. I figured it tastes like copper. But really... nothing is a substitute for real blood straight from the source." With these words, he shrank until he disappeared.

Robin tensed, unsure of what to expect next. His answer came in the form of a hand undoing and throwing away his utility belt before strong arms trapped him in a wrestling hold. Unable to resist, he was slammed against the wall, cheek grinding against the concrete. He could feel the green boy's breath on his neck, getting closer every second.

"Friend Beast Boy, why are you doing this to Robin? We are your friends, and we will help you with your problems if you let us." Starfire's voice was heavy with tears, but her hands glowed with starbolts.

A sudden tensing made the joints in Robin's shoulders creak, then he was released. He turned to find himself between Beast Boy's hands, which were pressed flat against the wall. The young man's eyes were squeezed shut, and his teeth were bared in a grimace.

"You can't help me with this, guys. No one can. Now I'm gonna go to my room and hate myself even more than I already do. Don't come in; don't even knock. Now go. Duck under my arm and stay in the common room."

Robin hesitated. "Beast Boy..."

"NOW!" Claws raked down the wall, showering him with flecks of concrete. Beast Boy stood panting for a moment, then sprinted straight to his room. An inhuman roar echoed down the hall before being cut off by his closing door.

They sat on the couch as if in a trance. Robin held Starfire's head in his lap, stroking her hair in a gesture that probably soothed him more than her. The team leader and the princess looked into each other's eyes, hoping for answers.

There were none.

**AN:** Pennies minted before 1982 have a higher copper content than pennies minted afterward.

**Special Note:** I have a few TT works waiting in the wings that I want to give a little better treatment to than these unbeta'd bits and pieces. If there's anyone out there who's willing to be brutally honest and help me refine them, please let me know.


	18. Only the Young

**AN:** What is it with me and making sad songs into happy stories and vice versa? Also, I think Jack Mirembe and Scribbler are rubbing off on me... and as far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing. Go read their stuff if you haven't already.

**Disclaimer:** If you still think I own any part of this stuff, I have some beachfront property to sell you. It's in Arizona.

**Only the Young- Journey**

A generation waits for dawn.

Some are heirs to a legacy, a sacred trust that safeguards a legend. They swore time and again they would be themselves first and foremost, that they would never be anything like those who raised them. In time, though, they will give up their struggle for identity and accept their fate. Behind the scenes, another bulb will be screwed into the socket, another fuse in the circuit breaker.

They will light the world, at the cost of self. Because what the world needs most of all is immortal heroes.

Others are newcomers, outsiders, interlopers who forced their way into the ranks, demanding a place to call their own. Bastard children of fate, they are keenly, unforgivably aware of their place in the machine. They are the pawns, the cannon fodder, the lower caste. Try as they might, they will never claim a place in the great dynasties.

They will give their lives in the service of their princes and princesses, those destined to rule the world. It is the way of things.

Dissimilar as the two groups may seem, they are bound together by unwavering trust, a common goal, and above all, sacrifice.

They have left behind so much of themselves on the altar of duty, watching all that might have been dissolve into ash as the flames powered the great and terrible engine.

Innocence was always first, ripped away from them and cast into the fire before their eyes. The circumstances were as varied as the young heroes themselves, but all of them had been robbed of their childhood, forced into life as soldiers in a war they would not come to understand for years. By then, the struggle would be carved into their bones, irreversibly bonded with their DNA. Some would mourn the loss even as adults; some would try to recapture bits and pieces wherever they could. Most chose to ignore the ache. It was easier not to think about it.

Normalcy slipped away without their knowledge. Most of them had little concept of the word's implications, if they were to be honest. Those who did envied their counterparts. Together, all of them constructed a version of normal that was anything but— lost children recreating home from bits and pieces of a collective memory filled with so many holes.

Happiness had never been theirs to begin with, and perhaps for this reason, the hope of happiness to come was the cruelest of all to forfeit. Their own needs and wants were subordinated to those of faceless masses they would never know, who would never know them, who would often hate them. The extra layer shoehorned into Maslow's Hierarchy made it all the harder to climb the pyramid, however far they reached. They have learned by now to accept a vague feeling of contentment in lieu of wishing for more; it helps them believe the nights they wake up screaming aren't entirely in vain.

Still, despite the horrors they have endured and those yet to come, despite the hollow inside each of them that they know will never be filled, they take comfort in one fact: they have each other.

And somehow, that makes everything else all right.


	19. Side of a Bullet

**AN:** I debated shelving this for a while, due to the subject matter and recent events... but here it is, for better or worse.

**Warning: This story centers around someone getting shot. It's not a massive, senseless killing perpetrated by an idiot, but if you're not comfortable, please feel free to skip this chapter.**

**Disclaimer:** I don't own the Teen Titans, and I make my money elsewhere.

**Side of a Bullet- Nickelback**

In all honesty, none of them had expected the gun to be real. Mumbo just wasn't that kind of criminal. Of course it was going to be loaded with a boxing glove or some such nonsense; that was how it worked with him. Apparently, though, one of Robin's verbal jabs had finally pushed the bumbling magician to his breaking point.

It wasn't until the split second before Mumbo pulled the trigger that each of them noticed something wrong.

Starfire saw murder in his eyes.

Raven felt it in his heart.

Cyborg calculated the diameter of the barrel and realized it was an honest-to-god .38 Special.

Beast Boy smelled gun oil.

They all had the same thought, more or less, in that instant of recognition: _Oh god, don't let him pull—_

The bullet that exploded from the pistol tore through Robin's chest like wet toilet paper. He didn't scream, didn't sink to his knees; just stumbled backward one step and fell. His head hit cement, rendering him mercifully unconscious.

Starfire was the first to his side, followed closely by the rest of the team. As the Tamaranean tried unsuccessfully to stem the blood that poured out of the sucking wound, Raven stood by, eyes wide with panic. "I still can't use my powers! I can't heal with my empathy... what do we do?"

Beast Boy was the one to step in, years of Doom Patrol conditioning guiding his orders. "Cy, Star, get after Mumbo!" he said, pointing at the retreating villain. "Do _anything_ it takes to make him give Raven's powers back. We'll need them if Robin is gonna have any chance of survival." Without a word, the two nodded and rushed off.

Beast Boy knelt by the Boy Wonder and examined the wound. The bullet had gone straight through, which was a two-edged sword. On the bright side, Beast Boy knew that the round hadn't bounced around and caused even more internal trauma, but it also meant that he was bleeding out faster, and there were two holes in Robin's right lung, putting it in grave danger of collapse. It was a good thing Mumbo hadn't opted for hollow point or ballistic tip rounds; Beast Boy doubted he could deal with that much trauma. As it was, this was going to be a tossup at best.

"No plastic or tape for miles," he muttered to himself. "Of _course_ this would happen at the abandoned carnival." He turned to Raven. "Take off your cloak," Beast Boy said as he stripped off his own shirt. "I'm going to put this against the exit wound, and your cloak will go against the entry wound. Okay?"

No response. Raven was staring at the hole in Robin's chest, watching the blood bubble as it came out.

"Raven!" he snapped. She jumped and brought her eyes to meet his, terror in her gaze. "Raven, I need you here, now. We can all fall apart later." He worked to tear his shirt into strips as he talked. "My shirt goes under him to block off the hole in his back. Your cloak will go over the wound on his chest. I need you to keep as much pressure on it as you can, and make sure he keeps breathing normally with his head tilted to the side." Sliding the wad of makeshift bandages underneath their friend, he did his best to cover the hole. "If his lung collapses, lift up one side of your cloak as little as possible until he can breathe right again. And keep an eye out for Mumbo. If he's attacking us, or you get your powers back, knock on Robin's chest three times and lift the cloak off the wound all the way. No matter what you feel from me, don't stop unless you have your powers or we're being attacked."

The empath nodded. "What are you going to do?"

Beast Boy gave her a grim smile. "Something stupid." He placed his hands over Robin's wound and disappeared.

Reaching past the creatures of his home planet, Beast Boy concentrated on a transformation he had never attempted, and had hoped he would never need.

Last Christmas, Starfire had given Beast Boy a comprehensive encyclopedia of Tamaran's animals, from the gigantic to the microscopic. Though she had presented it to him for sentimental reasons, he had set about culling the most tactically beneficial animals from its pages, hiding his labor from the team, and especially from Robin. He didn't want to have to call upon Tamaranean creatures unless absolutely necessary.

Garfield Logan had never really explained the nature of his powers to his teammates, largely because if they knew the specifics, they'd be hesitant to ask him to make certain transformations that were crucial to the team's strategies. There was always pain associated with his shifts, but some hurt worse than others. For larger animals, the addition of extra mass was the ache of expanding skin and other tissue that got worse and worse the bigger he got. When he became smaller creatures, he had the gut-wrenching sensation of being pulled in on himself, muscles and organs tightening and condensing in ways that physics had never intended.

With Tamaranean animals, these pains were much, much worse.

There was no choice, though; Robin was drowning in his own blood. It was up to the youngest Titan to save him.

With a scream of agony that no one heard, Beast Boy became a single, specialized cell. The Tamaranean equivalent of slime mold reproduced very rapidly and asexually, and when in colonies, formed a membrane with properties similar to plastic. It was precisely what he needed to patch Robin's lung. As he multiplied, he felt himself being ripped apart over and over again, spreading out to cover over the first hole, then around the surface of the lung to reach the second.

If he had been able to simply play the waiting game, the pain would have subsided, but the human body does not take kindly to intruders, even those on missions of mercy. Robin's white blood cells swarmed over Beast Boy, consuming his cells en masse. Each death was like being eaten alive, and he struggled through the horrendous sensation to replace the dying cells before air could pass through and deflate the lung.

He mercifully lost all concept of time, his only reassurance coming from Robin's slow but steady heartbeat and the expansion and contraction of the lung to which he was anchored.

Then the knocks came.

Steeling himself for one last push, Beast Boy reached out to all his cells and pulled inwards, then let go.

He resumed his normal form screaming, then collapsed beside Robin, tears streaming down his face to hit the pavement. He couldn't fight; couldn't even stand. If Mumbo was attacking, they were dead.

Garfield forced himself to turn over, and found Cyborg's concerned face above him. He felt like laughing in relief, but for some reason it could only come out as more tears. That was okay, though. They were safe. It was okay to fall apart now.

He closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he heard the steady beeping of a heart monitor. He felt funny, but not a bad kind of funny. Opening his eyes, he saw an IV in his hand. Under normal circumstances, he would probably be freaking out and tearing the needle out... but he couldn't manage to lift his arms so far.

He was exhausted. Or maybe it was the morphine. Yeaaaaaaaah, maybe lots and lots of morphine.

"Beast Boy, I..." Garfield turned his head to the right to find the Boy Wonder standing at his bedside, searching for words.

The green boy giggled at the awkwardness, then smiled. "Ah, 's okay, Rob." Hm. He was slurring... a lot. Morphine was fun.

"No, Beast Boy, it's not okay. It wasn't that long ago that I was treating you like a criminal, and even now, I don't always give you the credit you deserve. I know it bothers you sometimes... and yet you still risked your life for me, to do something impossible. And you saved my life. There's no way I can thank you enough."

Gar tried for a shrug, but it came out as more of a twitch. "Y'r not always my fav'rite person, but we're fam'ly. Thass what matters."

Of all the reactions Beast Boy had been expecting, a fierce hug from his leader was not one of them. "You're my family too, Beast Boy." His voice was choked, heavy with the need to convey his sentiments. "No matter how much we fight, never forget that." Releasing him, Robin stood back up and strode stiff-legged out the infirmary door, leaving Beast Boy to his thoughts.

If he could have managed it, the green boy would have shifted to a hyena just for the benefit of its cackle. "Think I jus' used up his feelings budget for th' year."

"You were right about one thing," a voice drawled behind him, snapping his head around. Raven sat in a chair on his other side, a book in her hands. "That was incredibly, incontrovertibly stupid."

He tried for another shrug and got a bit farther this time. He was getting some function back. "Worked, didn'it?"

She sighed. "Yes. And I'm not going to tell you never to do that again or any of the other standard warnings. Robin's only alive right now because of the time you bought him. But I am still very, very angry with you."

His face scrunched up in confusion. "Huh?"

Faster than he could track, the pale girl was out of her chair and looming over him. "We almost lost you, you dolt! Whatever you did drained your body of fluids and nutrients so completely that your nervous system was shutting down! Your muscles started spasming uncontrollably from the sodium-potassium imbalance! If we hadn't been able to get you hooked up to an IV drip in time, you would be dead, Gar."

He looked away. "Better me than Robin."

The sorceress took a fistful of his shirt and yanked him eye-to-eye with her. "Do. Not. _EVER_. Say that again. Don't you understand that this team only works because of _you_? Don't you have any _clue_ how important you—"

At a loss for what else to do, Garfield closed the centimeters between them and pressed his lips against hers. Ooooh, this was nice. More than nice. Yeah, this was pretty much the best thing ever. He kept one eye open, watching for the hand that was going to slap him. Sure enough, she drew back an open palm, but then it wavered in the air and came down slowly to cup his face.

When they broke away from each other, cheeks burning, she looked at him with cloudy eyes. "What was that for?" she asked, all semblance of her usual monotone gone.

A huge, dopey grin cracked his face. "Wanted t' do that for a_ loooooong_ time. Now seemed good. We should do that more often. Like, a _lot_."

The empath turned bright red, and something that was probably very expensive sparked and fizzled.

"Rae?" he asked, wondering if he'd just screwed up royally.

Those thoughts— and most others— vanished when she grabbed his face with both hands and gave him a deep, lingering kiss.

As their faces came apart the second time, Beast Boy tried to come up with just the right words to express himself. As it turned out, those words were, "Peh, flehfleb. Haaaaaa!" accompanied by a look of gleeful stupor as he fell back onto the pillow and passed out.

**AN:** Aaaand I'm back to Nickelback. I don't strongly dislike them, but I do think they have too much talent to waste on being this generation's Def Leppard. Every now and then, though, they come out with a song like this, and we see a little bit under the veneer.

Also, I may have completely screwed up the mechanics of a gunshot with entry and exit wounds through the lung. I imagine I'll be tweaking this if IronRaven has some input to that effect.


	20. Acquiesce

**AN:** This one ain't happy, kids. Please note the rating went up to M because of this piece. I've seen worse in other people's T fics, but it technically falls under M according to the guidelines. I don't want to lose 20 chapters on a technicality.

**Disclaimer:** I'm a bartender. I don't even own the booze I sell, much less any part of the Teen Titans.

**Acquiesce- Ghoti Hook**

Even now, her eyes were courting sleep.

He would stay by her side until she drifted away, as always, then slip under her door and back into his own room. Once inside, it would begin.

It was in these moments that he could break apart with the certainty that he would not disturb anyone.

The floodgate was cracked from their lovemaking; such openness and surrender was the furthest thing from simple for either of them, and while the wall would be back in place by morning, had to be for everyone's sake, he would take advantage of the opening the two of them had made. He needed this, needed it as much as the release he had given and found in her bed.

Naked, bestial, he would squat on the ground in the center of his room, and let the years of hurt escape from his eyes and drip on the floor.

He would cry for people, for places, for everything he had lost and found. All that had happened to him, all he had done, all he had failed to do.

When the memories had run their course, he would look in the mirror at his scarred, misshapen body.

With nothing left to show, no illusions left to hide behind, he saw himself for the hollow shell he was.

Everyone had taken something from him. Each time, he had tried to replace it, like a little child trying to recreate the missing puzzle piece with crayons and cardboard, extrapolating from rough edges and a half-remembered drawing.

By the time he had joined the Titans, there had been very little that remained of the real him. He and his best friend had that in common, though the metal man would never know it.

She had touched on the emptiness at times, very briefly, in the moments after their bodies separated and they lay in that fragile peace. She had sensed it; he could see it in her eyes. But neither of them ever said a word. It was better that way. They couldn't even construct a healthy relationship in the present; rummaging around in each other's pasts was patently off-limits.

Their day-to-day interactions were as they had always been; she was the immovable object, and he was the unstoppable force. They danced around each other and clashed and yelled and screamed and stonewalled each other. They barely qualified as friends, and yet...

There were those nights.

It was infrequent, it was desperate, and it was everything that they could not be in the light of day. He whispered tenderness in her ear and took her viciously, she reveled in all that he had to give and goaded him on with wicked, glorious words saved for him alone. They begged each other, sometimes with words, sometimes without. And when it was over, they would lie in that bed in comfortable silence, each savoring that moment of serenity that would be gone by morning, just as he would.

He wanted more, so much more, but he would be glad for anything. He would give so much for the privilege of making her tea in the mornings, or to be graced by a smile, however fleeting, when he said her name. He longed to wake with her in his arms, if only just for a single morning. Titles meant nothing to the beast in him; traditional courtships held no appeal for him or her. It was that desire to be by her side, no matter the means, that kept him coming back. There were few pleasures in his life greater than hearing her scream his name, be it in anger or otherwise. Passion was passion, and as long as hers belonged to him, he was content.

But she deserved more.

He was broken parts, sure of only weaknesses. He had been gutted time and again, and he couldn't expect her to accept such a worthless offering. He wasn't even sure what he had to offer anymore.

She deserved more.

And one day she would find it.

* * *

She lay still, alone in a bed that felt too large for just her. It had never been that way before... but he had changed so many things. She could feel his pain from the other room, sense the flood of frustration and helplessness that stemmed from a life of being tossed about like fate's ragdoll. It was all she could do not to go to him, whisper reassurances in his ear as he cried, soothe his aching heart. She wanted so desperately to be trusted with this part of him, with all of him.

She would have invited him to stay long ago, but she knew he needed this catharsis, perhaps even more than he needed her. He would never be willing to break so completely in front of her, and so she let him go each night, despite the ache in her chest that she knew was not coming from his bedroom.

He needed her; she felt it keenly with every second in his presence. It comforted her to know that his need was as deep and obsessive as her own... but he believed himself to be the only one. And she had to permit him that illusion.

It was better like this; better to take what little they could give each other while keeping their distance. The risks were too great.

They both carried so much darkness inside them, mismatched like images through a cracked mirror, but nonetheless similar in nature. If their darkness were ever to meet, it would either heal them, or destroy them both.

In her selfishness, her weakness, her desperation to keep him, she couldn't bear to take the risk of losing him. At her core, she was a frightened little girl, clinging to what was never hers.

* * *

**AN:** Woo, look at all that melancholy mined out of a song by a Christian punk band covering another band. I stole some words from Stephen Crane for this. In the Desert is my favorite poem in two decades of reading poetry, all the more so for its simplicity. Also, for the linguistics nerds, Ghoti is pronounced Fish. And, since I can't send you messages, I want to thank Curse you Perry the Platypus for the reviews... and for those of you who have yet to review, thank you for reading.


	21. Quiet

**AN:** This is dedicated to Souffles in Space for her 16th birthday (which I just learned a couple hours ago is today). Her work is captivating, and you should go read it. ALSO, I was an idiot and forgot both the disclaimer and the name of the song. For like a week. Duhhhh.

**Disclaimer:** Blah blah, don't own. No money. No sue.

**Quiet- LIGHTS**

Starfire would trade these moments for nothing on Earth or Tamaran or anywhere between. It was not often that they found themselves here, watching the sunset from the rooftop, but she managed occasionally to drag Robin away from his research and paperwork for these brief minutes.

They did not hold hands, nor did they gaze longingly into each other's eyes, though she would not have minded these things. In fact, she very much wished for them, but she was content simply to share a moment of such beauty with him.

Sunset drew her to the rooftop more often than it did him; she would find herself on the rooftop with Raven or Beast Boy far more frequently than with Robin. Those times were different, though. With Friend Raven, she would meditate, basking in the final rays of the sun until it disappeared and the sea breeze began to chill her companion. When Friend Beast Boy sat with the princess, it was because he needed to talk, or sensed that she needed to do the same. She and the green boy shared secrets, gave advice, laughed together, and sometimes cried.

There were never words spoken with Robin. There was no tragedy, no poetry, nothing but the moment. She was not his, and he was not hers, but still they sat in contentment, something strong and impossible to name passing between them.

She did not call him Friend Robin; not anymore. If he had noticed when she began to omit the title, he had not made any indication. On Tamaran, the omission of the word was a powerful gambit, used when a friendship was destined to either become something more, or die out. She could not bring herself to trivialize her heart's urgings by continuing to address him as a mere friend, though she feared what his reaction would be when he came upon this realization.

Until then, she could wait.

**AN:** Erk, I haaaaaaate writing from Star's point of view. It's the most difficult of all the Titans for me. Dialogue? Sure, have ten pages. But inner monologue and thought processes? It's like pulling teeth to get a paragraph. Still, it's practice, and the song fit too well to let this pass.


	22. Mayhem at First Sight

**AN:** This is the first time I've been inspired to write based off of the New Teen Titans shorts, but this sprang into my head and wouldn't let go. How would these two really meet if they weren't confined to less than two minutes? What would they have in common that would be strong enough to keep them together?

**Disclaimer:** I don't own 'em. I don't make money from 'em. If I get a cease and desist over this, I reserve the right to ridicule every involved party with song and dance.

**Mayhem at First Sight- Tom Kenny (The Amazing Mumbo)**

With lives such as theirs, it stood to reason that they would meet in the prison yard.

Jump City's metahuman prison was run much like most prisons, with a few key exceptions. It would be beyond illogical to insist on forcing the square peg of superpowered criminals into a nice, round hole just because the State of California thought it convenient.

The male and female populations were not kept separate. In the explanations that rolled off the warden's tongue when a bright-eyed young reporter stopped by in search of The Story, it was a matter of classification. Where was Kardiak to go, for example? And what of the villain in their custody whose sex changed approximately every five weeks? It would be simply unconscionable to enforce such a separation... and off the record, the warden was in no hurry to field a discrimination lawsuit.

If anyone were to give an honest answer, though, it boiled down to two key facts: one, the population was better-behaved when allowed to mingle; and two, if any misguided soul were ever to attempt something improper with one of the ladies, the full wrath of every inmate would descend on the miscreant... if he was left in enough pieces by his intended victim.

Criminals though they might be, Jump's supervillains had a rigid code of ethics, and baseness of that sort was not tolerated.

No one noticed when the witch and the magician first began appearing together in the exercise yard, but their meetings grew more and more frequent, until eventually Mumbo and Mother Mae Eye were seldom seen apart.

They made quite the pair, really. They walked side by side most days; neither of them would dream of touching the weights, and they would refuse all invitations to join the basketball game. They were a bit old for such silly things, thank you very much, and they'd appreciate a bit of peace and quiet. And so around the yard they walked, talking in hushed tones, leaning toward each other. Some days they were more boisterous, and cackled loudly at exploits both past and future. On those rare occasions when their hands touched, the overlapping blue and green was pleasing to the eye, in an odd sort of way. The portly three-eyed woman and the stick-thin balding man were the last couple anyone had expected, but the incongruous match made them the prison yard's sweethearts... not that anyone would admit to watching, much less to caring.

The few familiar with their pasts knew better than most just how well they fit together; their psyches were cracked along many of the same lines.

Mother Mae Eye had inherited the ancient gypsy curse that was the stuff of European fairytales, but even before her skin had gone green and she had woken up with a third eye, she hadn't been entirely well. Only a handful of people had seen the entire file with its diagnosis of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, but the pictures of an infant floating facedown in an old claw-foot bathtub had been leaked when the case file was transferred to the metahuman prison. Most of the guards believed the curse had sought her out, sensing that its nature would be compatible with her disorder. With her newfound powers, the once-kindly old woman began "adopting" children from all over Jump City. Most were never found, but the lab results on the contents of her pies left little doubt as to what had become of them.

The party magician who had barely been able to make ends meet thought he had finally gotten his big break when the top hat and wand he found in a thrift shop turned out to be imbued with powerful magic. With such tools, he could finally compensate for the shaky, fumbling fingers that a thyroid disorder had saddled him with long ago. He had turned himself in willingly the first time his powers had gone haywire and left three children in the hospital. Even locked away in storage, though, the artifacts whispered to him, poisoning his mind and turning his skin bluer with each day. By the time he escaped, they had driven him completely mad.

Deep down, all either of them wanted was the laughter and love of their children. The means had been twisted beyond recognition, but the wish was, at its core, still pure and innocent.

No one was particularly surprised when they broke out together; even the most inept of inmates managed to escape at least twice a year, and with all the time those two spent together, it stood to reason that a good portion of it had been spent plotting how they were going to jump ship.

The warden didn't bat an eyelash when they sent him a picture of their wedding cake; he was, by some strange machinations of fate, the closest thing to a father figure either of them had left. The design was unmistakably their own, from the fanged rosebuds to the periwinkle tuxedo. He couldn't for the life of him guess why Mumbo appeared as both groom and minister, but the five miniature Titans trapped in the cake were a nice touch, if a bit morbid.

Yes, Mumbo and Mother Mae Eye were quite the pair. Love came later, but it was mayhem at first sight.


	23. Jolene

**AN:** Dolly Parton's pretty much the furthest thing from my cup of tea, but there are some absolutely dynamite covers of this song out there, and the lyrics are timeless.

**Special Note:** The reason for my prolonged silence is that I've written another installment of this, but it's too sexual to post on this site. So if you want some AU dark, slashy smut, ask me and swear you're over 18 and I'll PM you the link to the other site. If you're under 18, please don't ask me to send it to you.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of this. No suing.

**Jolene- Dolly Parton**

The cave was better lit than she should have made it, in hindsight. Dim light was forgiving; shadows could give the illusion of life where there was none. The light had never been kind to her, and this was no exception. It would not allow her the fantasy, however transparent, that this was a conversation instead of desperate apostrophe.

As Raven approached the statue, her steps grew shorter, more hesitant. She could barely believe she was here, much less that she was about to indulge such an irrational whim. Still, nothing about this situation was rational.

She cleared her throat. "I'm... not really sure what I'm doing here." Her voice was the barest whisper, self-conscious despite the absence of a single living soul within miles. "This isn't something I do. It seems to help him, though, and I'm out of options. So... I suppose I should start with hello. Maybe an apology for not visiting more often. However these things go."

Terra made no response, of course.

"I'll just cut to the chase. You and I were barely ever friends. Part of that was my fault, and part was... well... circumstances. Decisions. Not going to go into that."

She took a deep breath, trying to focus. "You have something that's very important to me. And I want it. You have no use for it anymore, and I want to... ask for it, I suppose. I don't know. The ways I know to go about getting what I want would warp it into something it should never be, and so I find myself here, talking to a piece of stone.

"He talks about you in his sleep. He doesn't know I hear him. He doesn't know I listen at his door, but I do." She tried for a rueful smile, but came out gritting her teeth. "He thinks I'm creepy already; I can't imagine what he would think of me if he were to find out about that particular habit of mine.

"Even after all this time, you've still got a hold on him. You're the one he dreams of, the one he confides in, the one he comes to late at night when he wakes up screaming... and I want that. All of it." She ran her hands through her hair, clutching at it and tugging. "Azar help me, I want him to spill his guts to me about everything that makes him hurt, hope, laugh, lose control... I want to know him, the real him. I can tell he's hiding. He's better at it than anyone I've ever met.

"He has enough practice hiding his emotions that he can cover whatever he's really feeling with a layer of something else, like a candy coating on an arsenic pill. If he really tries, he can go completely dark to me. When he does that, I don't even feel his existence. And all of that scares me so much. It's not that I don't trust him; I trust him more than I do myself most days. But I'm terrified that I'll spend years around him and still never know who he really is."

A black, glowing ball appeared above Raven's head, warping and thrashing. Her emotions were overpowering her, and she had to channel the energy overflow in order to avoid causing accidental damage. "Damn it all, Terra, I know he's not mine, and I don't know if he ever will be, but I want him! I want him to come to me when he's hurting, instead of coming down here to cry on your shoulder like he always does." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Even as a rock, you're better at comforting him than I ever will be, I know, but..." She lifted her gaze to the statue as tears spilled down her cheeks. "Don't you think I at least deserve the chance to try?"

The energy ball expanded to fill the cavern, running along all the cracks and crevices in the ceiling, before shuddering and collapsing in on itself. Spent, the girl dropped to her knees at Terra's feet and let the tears flow until they, too, disappeared.


	24. Forever

**AN:** For the first time in this collection, I'm posting something in immediate sequence, because this moment wouldn't leave me alone. It picks up right as "Jolene" ends. If you need a refresher, go ahead and read that again. It's short.

**Forever- Necessary Response**

As Raven knelt, weeping, she felt a twisting in her stomach. The sensation intensified even as her tears subsided, until something snapped and she felt shame, guilt, a tiny ray of hope— him.

_Beast Boy_.

He was here, in the cave.

Oh Azar, he had been here the whole time, hiding from her empathy!

He had heard it. _All of it._

Had she not been so drained from her earlier outburst, she would have teleported away in an instant, but she was trapped until she could gather enough energy.

"No, no, _no_," she whispered, stumbling to her feet and preparing to run, before she was stopped by a single word.

"Raven." His voice echoed around the cave, despite how softly he had spoken. She still couldn't see him; he was hiding in one of the few shadows the cave had left.

"I didn't—" she stopped, unsure of what to say. She didn't mean it? She had meant every word, even if she was still completely in the dark as to why. She had come with a vague sense of purpose, but the words meant for stone ears had come tumbling out unbidden, without premeditation or control. "I didn't expect anyone to be here."

"Me either." He stepped into the light, eyes and posture unreadable. He had walled himself off again, though not as completely as before. "Did you mean it?"

Unsure of how to answer, Raven looked down at her feet. Finally, she decided a direct answer would be best. "Yes. I could try to qualify and explain parts, but yes. I did. I want to know you. The real you."

They stared at each other, the weight of the confession hanging between them. Eventually, Beast Boy nodded.

"All right," he said. "I came here to spill my guts..." Raven winced at the reminder of her own words, but said nothing. "Guess I can try to do it with you."

"Okay. You can start by dropping that wall you've got up."

He grimaced and tugged at his hair. "You sure? It's pretty ugly."

"I'm sure. I can handle it." She formed a shield against the emotional backlash she knew was coming, but tried to keep it as thin as possible. Sure enough, the emotions came rushing out, raw and sharp and ready to cut into her, but they were sufficiently dulled as to be bearable.

Beast Boy looked around, and uncertainty and frustration wormed around her. "I'm sorry... I can't start this. It might help if you ask me something, though."

A million questions came to mind, burning to be answered, but as Raven's eyes fell on the object in his hands, she opted for something she hoped was innocuous enough. "Okay... Why are you holding... that?"

He smiled, yet he looked all the sadder for it. "This?" he asked, holding up the plate. "It's the best pie in the history of pie."

"Better than Starfire's zorkaberry pie?"

"Starfire's tastes better, if I'm gonna be honest, but this... it's what I called it when T—" he coughed, obviously trying to work around the lump forming in his throat. "When Terra and I went out that night. I bring it to her sometimes." A sharp exhalation, trying to be a laugh so as not to give way to sobbing. "Sad thing is, I can't stomach it anymore. I can barely even manage a bite of zorkaberry pie before it turns into ash in my mouth. That girl ruined pie for me." He shot her what was supposed to pass for a grin. "Maybe just for that she deserved to be turned to stone."

Raven made no move to chastise him for the harsh words; she had felt the sickening swirl of grief and anger and the desperation that sent him to his standard coping mechanism.

"Not funny," he said after a moment, voice getting smaller again. He set the plate on the ground, then knelt, almost apologetic in his movements. "I know I don't mean it. I say a lot of things I don't mean in here. It's just... I always laugh it off. Everything. I've always done it that way. But this hurts _so bad_, and I can't make it go away."

The green boy's emotions were overwhelming Raven, pounding and clawing at her minimal shielding. She had hoped to keep as small a barrier as possible between them to be more in tune with his feelings, but the strategy was backfiring. It hurt so much and why did it have to be like this and why couldn't it all just stop and go away and—

Compelled by some unknown agent, Raven dropped to her knees and seized Beast Boy in a hug. Like a soap bubble, surprise spiked and burst, leaving in its wake a moment of relative calm.

Then the floodgate opened.

Raven felt the dampness on her shoulder, heard the rhythmic cough-like sounds of near-silent sobbing, but more than that, she felt her teammate letting go of a massive torrent of grief and guilt. Though she shielded herself as best she could from the onslaught, tears still leaked from the corners of her eyes.

In time, catharsis exhausted its fuel, and the last embers were left smoldering. Beast Boy pulled away from her, still on his knees, and smiled at her— a genuine, grateful smile.

"Thank you." His voice was hoarse, but the hurt and self-loathing in it was gone for the time being.

"Anytime," she said. "And I mean that. I want to help. It's just... I'm not... good at all this. I don't know how to do it yet. I don't know how it's done, whether I should talk or listen or—"

Beast Boy's hand on her shoulder interrupted her. "You did great, Raven. And I'll try to come to you. I can't guarantee I won't be back here... there are a lot of things I can't tell anyone, not even her if she was still alive. But I'll try to come to you first."

Raven didn't have to force the smile that crossed her face.

Standing, the green boy extended a hand. "Now let's get out of here. I think we've both had enough of this for one night."

As she took his hand, the empath felt somehow that despite how broken they both were, everything just might turn out all right.


	25. Blown Away

**AN:** There's never really been an origin for Jinx in the cartoon, from what I've seen and read, so I got to wondering about where she was born. She strikes me as a Midwest girl who managed to find her way out west in hopes of a better life... and of course when I heard this song, it fit far too well. Not wanting to pick a real town for this, I created a fictional one. I noticed that there are a lot of Native American names for towns in Oklahoma, so I reached back ten years to my trigonometry lessons and mangled the old SOHCAHTOA mnemonic.

**Disclaimer:** Don't own, don't make money, don't sue me because I'm beautiful.

**Blown Away- Carrie Underwood**

Socatoah had always been a small town, full of small minds. Once upon a time, it had been a little coal mining town, filled with grubby roughnecks covered in sweat and soot. The mines closed down in the twenties, and those who had the means got out just as fast as they could. Those who couldn't or wouldn't escape spread their seed around the town, and a generation of hard-working, hard-drinking farmers were born. Ever since, that stock seemed to have done nothing but fester, the same two thousand souls milling around in different bodies and different families for generations. No one ever came into Socatoah unless they were lost, and no one ever heard of anyone leaving since the coal dried up.

Every now and then, though, life has a little glitch, a minute shifting of billions of probabilities to accommodate the impossible. One such shift brought Jennifer Wrangler into the world. Probability, though, is impartial, and will almost invariably balance great fortune with crippling misfortune. However miraculous her birth, its circumstances were no cause for celebration.

Grace Jones, the unwed orphan girl who brought Jennie into the world, only disobeyed the father of her child once, when she spared her daughter's life. Very few people in Socatoah dared impugn the charismatic junior pastor of the town's only church, but the woman carrying his child was braver than anyone suspected. Sundays always saw her seated in the pews, even when she began to show a bump without the requisite jewelry to make such a thing acceptable. She ignored the muttering and whispering that drowned out the words of forgiveness the senior pastor read from that leather-bound book they all professed to love.

It was only when young Pastor Wrangler took the pulpit with a pointed message of sexual purity, eyes boring into the mother-to-be as he spewed venom cherry-picked from a book of forgiveness, that her gaze clouded over and her face set in a permanent blank look.

Her little girl was born without fanfare, delivered by the town's wizened old doctor in the wee hours of the morning. If anyone had bothered to ask him about the birth, he would have said it had gone precisely as expected, up until he had asked Grace if she intended to leave the father's name blank on the birth certificate.

The revelation of Jennifer Wrangler's parentage destroyed the young pastor, of course. In the blink of an eye, he went from being groomed to lead the faithful flock to being all but run out of town with his woman and newborn child. In the end, all that saved them was his reluctant agreement that they be wedded. The papers were drawn up that day and the wedding took place with a pair of fifty-dollar rings picked up from a pawn shop one town over.

Stripped of his position in the church, James Wrangler found himself falling back on his family's two professions— auto repairs and whiskey drinking. His daughter never in her life saw him smile, or smelled his breath without the stench of whiskey all over it.

It seemed that Grace Wrangler's courage dried up entirely with the change of last name; the cowering creature who took her husband's beatings with nothing but apologies was no role model for her child.

When Jennie began complaining of migraines, neither parent listened, so absorbed were they in their own private miseries. When she emerged from her room after a two-day headache with pink eyes and hair, though, she certainly had their attention.

It wasn't long after that freak accidents began happening wherever Jennie went; windows shattered for no reason, the electricity would fail at school on test days, cars broke down all along the street whenever she stumbled. The townsfolk began muttering of a demon, forged by the pastor's unholy union with that orphan girl. Did anyone remember where she had come from, after all? Perhaps she was a witch sent by Satan to seduce a good man to his downfall.

There were no tears when Jennie came home one afternoon to find Grace Wrangler hanging from the ceiling fan; the woman had never truly been her mother, whatever the birth certificate might say. She gave the sheriff their address over the phone, mentioning that there was really no rush, as her mother was most definitely dead already.

The greatest tragedy of Grace's death was that James Wrangler suddenly found himself bereft of his favorite punching bag, and the way he saw it, the Lord had seen fit to provide him with a replacement who no longer qualified as human.

She held out for a year before she began to crack. Finally, the day came when she had had enough.

With her father passed out on their battered old couch, having exhausted his drunken rage, little Jennie prayed in earnest for the first time in her young life.

Socatoah had seen a lot of tornadoes in its time, but none like the one that touched down that day. The funnel stayed over just one home, scattering it in millions of pieces, before drawing back up into the sky. The people of the town would talk about it for years, saying that the Devil had come to claim his own, and good riddance. The former pastor and his daughter were not missed.

No one that day saw the battered little girl walking away from the approaching twister towards the Interstate. Not a soul was witness to the dried tears on her cheeks, nor the deadness in her eyes.

There would never be enough rain in Oklahoma to wash the sins out of that house. The closest possible thing to absolution was to tear its very foundation out and crumble it to pieces in the wind.


	26. Love Has No Pride

**AN:** Another day, another dollar, another character and perspective I've never tried before. It's fun, even if I can't get too deep into his head. The song itself was one I first heard from the 1994 version of Little Rascals. That one was by Rosanne Cash, and is my favorite, but I've never been able to find it anywhere. Of the ones in my library, I prefer Linda Ronstadt's.

**WARNING: **This boy's got a mouth on him when he's desperate. You should be able to figure out who it is and who he's addressing pretty easily.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Teen Titans; just a creative potty-mouth that's significantly worse than what you see here.

**Love Has No Pride- Linda Ronstadt**

I had another bad dream last night.

It's funny; everyone says nightmares start to go away as you get older, that they start to lose their power. They don't have any bearing on the real world, so there's no need to wake up sweating and shivering and clutching at your pillow like it's the only thing keeping you alive. That's what they say.

Well, I've had bad dreams too many times to think that they don't mean much anymore.

Last night, it was about you.

You were with the Titans, of course. Dreams tend to reflect reality, and that's been a pretty harsh reality for us. Nothing new there.

This time, though, one of Bird Brain's little grappling hooks got buried in See-More's throat, and there was nothing I could do for him. I watched him bleeding out and trying to scream and the blood was all over my hands because I'm the leader because you're not here anymore.

And I looked up, and there you were, standing over us.

I begged you to help him. The words got lost; that's how dreams are. But I knew you knew what I was saying. And you just stood there.

You weren't laughing maniacally or anything like that. That would have made it okay, because then it would have obviously been a dream. I could have dealt with that.

No, you had this look of disdain and indifference, like I was some fucking Jehovah's Witness at the door asking you to come to Jesus or something.

Not asking you to save the life of someone who used to be your family.

We all know you're too goddamn good for us now. That's what made it so real, and it scared me shitless.

Heh. There I am, back to old habits. I remember telling you my Mom didn't do piss for me as a parent, but I guess that's not quite true. That cracked-out bitch gave me a vocabulary. Not that it makes up for her drug use stunting my growth, but hey. You take what you can.

Remember when I first busted out the Big No-No C Word in front of you? You grabbed me by the ears and picked me up, no powers or anything... and then you told me that swearing was unprofessional and that I was going to have to start making substitutions if I wanted to stay on the team.

And thus was born Gizmo's Gigantic Compendium of Magical Not-Quite-Swearwords. Of all of them, I'm proudest of cludge. Just sounds dirty, doesn't it? Wonder if you ever sorted out which word was which...

Oh well, doesn't mean shit anymore. You're gone, and I don't have to watch my mouth now.

And it's not like you died or something. It's way fucking worse. Know why? Because I'm watching the girl who was our family disappear a little more every time I see you, and in her place is just another Titan. Because of course they always win.

No wonder you were only too happy to leave us for them.

I'm so fucking tired, Pinkie. I can't do this. You were never supposed to leave us, I was never supposed to be the leader, and the team was never supposed to be living in the maintenance tunnels of the sewers, slowly starving to death because we can't steal enough to survive.

If we can't turn this around within the next month, I'm gonna cut loose whoever wants out, and the rest of us are gonna kill one civilian each so that we all get life without parole. And then we'll stay there. At least in prison we'll have food and shelter.

I know it'd be so much different if you were still here, but since that's not an option, I guess I'm just glad you never check in on us.

I'd hate for you to see what we've become without you.

And you know what scares me the most? I don't even know if it would bother you anymore.


	27. Himerus and Eros

**AN:** Whoo! Slashy goodness time. While I can't see these two working out as a long-term couple, they're so much fun to jam together for a moment or two. As for the song, it's surprisingly well-composed for... well... emo. A single album by this band is pretty much my sole concession to that particular genre, owing to its great musicianship and pretty good lyrics.

**Warning:** Slash. That means boys making out. Don't like? Skip the chapter.

**Disclaimer:** The extent of my possessions can be (and has been repeatedly) packed into boxes that contain nothing involving the Teen Titans.

**Himerus and Eros- The Spill Canvas**

By unspoken agreement, their gloves came off almost immediately.

They were so eager to touch, to map landscapes of skin with their hands... and all the better with nothing to block the sensation.

Beast Boy moaned into Robin's mouth as a questing hand drew the top half of his uniform upwards, knuckles tracing friction along his abs. Losing contact with the Boy Wonder's lips long enough to draw the shirt over his head left the animal in him growling at the interruption, and he resolved not to let it happen again. Green fingers made quick work of his partner's shirt in the intervening seconds before pressing against pale hips and drawing them together at the waist.

Once more their lips crashed together, riding the line between tenderness and brutality hard on the side of the latter. Tongues answered the challenge that eyes laid down, each trying to outmatch the other in pleasure given.

His status as alpha male in other regards notwithstanding, Robin would have to earn Beast Boy's submission in this arena.

Tracing his hand up through his leader's hair, Garfield noted with disappointment that he could not run his fingers through the spikes to reach the older boy's scalp.

The excess of hair gel served another purpose, though.

Drawing his clawed fingers up the back of Robin's head, Beast Boy made a fist in the taller boy's hair and pulled, breaking off the kiss.

A gasping moan escaped from the Boy Wonder, and his eyes snapped open, wide behind the mask. Beast Boy's eyes bored into him, challenging him to submit or fight back...

There was a raspy, muted sound humming in the background, but it was of no concern. All that mattered was the symphony of heavy breathing and the friction of hips.

That is, until a pair of feminine giggles snapped them both from their reverie.

Releasing their hold on each other, they sprang apart panting.

"Whoa!" Beast Boy scrubbed at his mouth, turning a deep shade of forest green from the blood rushing to his cheeks. "What the... dude! Did we just... why did we... huh?"

"And that is what the two of you get for being the immature dogs that are horned." Starfire sat on her bed, arms crossed, a smug expression on her face.

Robin looked as though he would be seething with rage, were he not so completely shocked. "Raven, you took control of our minds! That's a complete invasion of priv—"

"I'm an empath, Robin. Mind control is above my pay grade. I merely... influenced certain feelings." The gray girl let a wicked smirk wander onto her face. "I didn't create any impulses that weren't already there. Chew on _that_ one for a while."

Beast Boy looked at Robin, whose mouth was working furiously to produce a coherent word as a blush shot straight to the tips of his ears. He had a feeling a glance in the mirror would show something similar.

"Now you know how friend Raven and I feel when you pressure us to do the making out."

"All. The time." To describe Raven's tone as icy would be akin to calling the Joker a bit wacky.

"But that's different!" Beast Boy tried to stammer out an explanation, but logic was failing him. "It's just... two girls together is hot!"

Starfire fixed them with a look that was anything but innocent. "Oh, but the two of you doing the making out caused us to become very much heated and perturbed."

Under his breath, Robin mumbled something that sounded like, "Hot and bothered."

"Yes, thank you, Robin. We were the hot and bothered by this display. Is that not true, friend Raven?" The Tamaranean looked to her companion, a booted foot not-so-subtly nudging her to play along.

"Actually..." The empath looked down, and her cheeks turned pink. "Yeah."

Robin opened his mouth to say something, but only managed to let out an undignified squeak as Beast Boy grabbed him and dipped him into another searing kiss.


	28. Big Girls Don't Cry

**AN:** Whoa, two pieces in one day? I'm fairly sure that's a record for me. For those of you reading my more Cyborg-centric work, I'll be trying to upload one a day until it's run its course. These will come as time and inspiration permit.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own the Teen Titans. And since I'm not a big girl, I'm allowed to cry about that.

**Big Girls Don't Cry— Fergie**

Of all the myths and misconceptions regarding the Teen Titans, one of the most widespread was that Raven was utterly devoid of emotion. She was able to express herself by summoning them from others vicariously, it was said, but she had none to speak of in an independent sense.

In situations like these, she almost wished that rumor were true.

"I hope you know that this has nothing to do with you," she said, fighting the urge to bring her hood up. "I just... I need to move on and experience other kinds of relationships."

Goth Boy stared at her, mouth held in a tight line. She felt him struggling to center himself, and not doing a very good job of it. The hurt radiating off of him made her want to wall herself off and deaden her empathy as much as possible, but she forced herself to feel. It was only fair.

"Don't be mistaken: I'm very fond of what we have together," she continued. "It's comfortable, and I enjoy it. But I shouldn't _be_ comfortable. As much as that's what I want, it's not what I need. I need my limits pushed so that I can develop and mature."

"And I can't do that for you?" His voice was still the same monotone as always... almost. The razor-sharp edge of something akin to desperation would have been easy to miss for anyone not accustomed to his company.

Raven shook her head. "No, I'm afraid not."

Goth Boy nodded. "I get it."

Bringing a hand to the back of her head and looking away in a gesture all too reminiscent of a certain green superhero, she tried again at the art of consolation. "For what it's worth, you were a lot of firsts for me... first date, first valentine, first boyfriend..."

"So we were? Official, I mean?" An odd thread wavered between hope and relief.

"I don't know about official; we never negotiated and defined our relationship. But in my mind you'll always be my first boyfriend."

A rare grin cracked his face at that, and the emotion blossomed to envelop her in warmth. "I like the sound of that."

"Me too." She gave him a hint of a smile, and her heart tightened when his emotions brightened, then almost immediately turned bittersweet.

"So..." Raven took a deep breath, preparing herself. "Are you going to be all right?"

He shrugged. "I'm fine. I'm always fine."

She stared him down. "No. Don't do that. I already have a tower full of damaged people who insist they're always fine. Whatever you're feeling, be honest."

The black-clad boy sighed, chewing at his lip. "What do you expect me to say? It's gonna suck for a while. I like you a lot. Probably more than I ever mentioned. But I'll get over it eventually." A shrug as he dropped his eyes to study the earth beneath his feet. "That's what people do."

"All right." Now it was Raven's turn to look at the ground. "I know it's a bit early to ask this, but... one day, when we've moved past this, do you think we can be friends?" Her eyes came up with some effort to meet his. "I really do care about you still."

A swirl of feelings hit her, running the gamut from elation to anger. It settled eventually on a fragile hope ringed with thorns. His sigh was as eloquent as his aura. "Maybe. That one's tough. But we'll see after a while. Just... let me be the one to come to you, okay? I need to process. Probably write a lot of sad poems." He gave her a wobbly smile. "You don't mind if I use this for material, do you?"

Raven shook her head. "Not at all. I hope I can read them one day. You're quite good, you know."

A little swell of pride softened the sharp edges on his emotions. "Thanks. As I remember, the one you wrote wasn't half bad either."

They stood there for a moment, neither quite able to look the other in the eye, when a surge of nervousness swelled up and was briefly beaten into submission by a flash of courage.

"So... I know this is probably too much, but... could I have one last kiss?" The boy's eyes were already accepting the no, but his heart held onto a sliver of hope.

She grimaced. "Despite how much I really, really want that, I think it would probably be the worst thing for both of us." The sorceress tried not to flinch as the hope snapped almost audibly.

Goth Boy looked down. "You're right. So... amicable parting of ways?" He held out his hand to shake, not looking up.

Raven seized him in a hug, clinging to him and doing everything in her power to remember the moment.

When they parted, she pretended not to notice the smudges in his eyeliner.

"I'm going to miss you," she said.

"Yeah. Same here." As he turned to walk away, he stopped for a moment. "I have... an odd question. Probably inappropriate considering the circumstances, but I'm curious."

Raven raised an eyebrow. "You're welcome to ask."

"Is there someone else?"

A flash of green in her mind, a fanged smile. A distant future, if ever. If they were to have any chance at a relationship not ending in bloodshed, they would both need to do some growing up.

She took a breath. "Not at the moment."

Goth Boy gave her a slow nod. "Mhmm."

What was that knowing smirk?


	29. She's Fading Away

**AN:** I'm going back to Season 1 Episode 1 for this one. Final Exam had some great moments to explore, and one thought in particular was nagging at me. This takes place after Robin falls; if you want to refresh your memory by watching again, it's around the 7:30 mark of the episode.

**Disclaimer:** I own what nihilists believe in.

**She's Fading Away— Curtis Stigers**

The gigantic doors swing open for them, the thunk and whirr of the machinery all the louder for the silence in the hall. Her arms rest on his waist, a horribly awkward position for helping to support his weight. She's sure it doesn't help him much, but he hasn't said a word yet. He hasn't spoken since he shouted their leader's name.

Morphing into a peregrine falcon, Beast Boy had immediately dropped towards the water, only to shift into a dolphin as he hit the surface. His desperate clicks and squeals were loud enough to travel into the air, and even flying, Raven had been hard-pressed to keep up with the pace he set as he shot downstream.

An hour later, having found only Robin's utility belt, she had pulled the green dolphin from the murky waters and up through one of the holes the fight had left in the pavement, gritting her teeth as he flopped and struggled against her powers.

When he had finally shifted back to his human form and dropped to his hands and knees, vomiting and shaking uncontrollably from the toxins in the raw sewage, she had laid a hand on his back, rubbing in small circles. Then she had whispered in his ear, three simple words that had never hurt so much to say.

"Let's go home."

One shaky step and a stumble, and Raven had shot forward to support him. She couldn't let him fall; he was the team's drive, the embodiment of their unquenchable optimism. If he fell, they all did.

Even now, as she guides him to the chair, she can't help but worry that it may be too late.

She expects the coming denial from him, just as she knows she can never allow it of herself. Even if she managed to indulge her own disbelief, the emotions swirling through the city make public opinion no secret. Everywhere, the acceptance of an inevitable truth.

The Titans were destined to fail. And now everyone is wondering why it hadn't happened yet. After all, for all their talents, they're nothing more than children.

"That didn't just happen. Tell me that didn't just happen," he murmurs, collapsing in the chair.

"It _did_ happen. We cannot change the truth, no matter how much we dislike it." She instantly despises herself for the words even as they leave her mouth, wants to draw her hood back up and hide. Comfort has never been her strong suit, but somehow it seems that everything she says today is designed to wound her green teammate.

He hides the pain her words cause; buries it beneath the ache in his thigh, rubbing as though that will make them both go away. She's probed it surreptitiously with her powers— a greenstick fracture that extends over halfway through his femur. The fact that he hasn't said a thing about it or shown a sign of discomfort beyond the limp speaks volumes of his pain tolerance.

Now, though, she can see hope dying in his eyes. He's succumbing to the agony, physical and emotional. If that spark in his eyes goes out...

Without another thought, she drops to one knee and extends her hands, fighting to keep her face impassive as the ache transfers from his leg to her fingers, flowing through her body up to her chakra stone. If she can relieve him of one sort of pain, maybe that will be enough.

He stares for a moment, dumbfounded, before his eyebrows arch upwards. "Who knew we had a doctor in the house? Thanks." His smile is warm, grateful. And in his heart she feels a glow, an iota of faith rekindled. If they have this secret weapon, who's to say they don't have others yet undiscovered?

"No problem," she replies in her monotone, cursing it for its necessary inadequacy. Joy and hope and happiness creep from within her to tug at the corners of her mouth. Would it be so dangerous, just this once, to smile?

The doors open a second time, and the moment is shattered, but a sense of satisfaction still pervades her.

It doesn't matter that she had hoped to keep her healing a secret. Even if the others learn of it, it will have been worthwhile.

There is still hope in Beast Boy's eyes. Until that hope is gone, they're never defeated.


	30. Just Give Me a Reason

**AN: **Wow... 30 of these things. I never imagined this would turn into the biggest collection I've ever written by far. As always, reviews, critiques, and any other input you may have are more than welcome. And if you can't tell from context, this particular chapter is a couple years down the road at least. These Titans aren't teens anymore.

**Disclaimer: I don't own any part of the Teen Titans, but I will pay handsomely for a pair of Beast Boy underpants.**

**Just Give Me a Reason— Pink ft. Nate Ruess**

Her scent woke him.

However heavy a sleeper Beast Boy was as a human, however many blaring clock radios it took to wake him at a reasonable hour, the animal kingdom living inside him never let down its guard. Each creature he could become had instincts that were finely attuned to danger, and would rouse him in an instant if necessary. With years of practice, he had managed to filter out many auditory cues as definite false alarms, but his nose was rarely wrong, if ever.

So it was when Raven rose from the bed they shared, reeking of distress.

One green eye cracked to watch as she wandered out the door, which slid shut behind her with the barest hint of a sound, leaving him in the dark to puzzle over her actions.

Neither of them was a stranger to nightmares, but usually they would wake one another with their cries. Regardless of whether they discussed the particulars, there was at least the confirmation that it had been a bad dream; it was as much to convince themselves of it as to inform one another. He could also rule out more mundane concerns that might arise during the night; her scent screamed at him that she was hurt.

If it hadn't been a nightmare, then what?

A few minutes passed with no sign of Raven, and the changeling decided he had waited long enough. Shifting the covers aside and reaching for a pair of boxers, he pulled them on with gloved hands. Ever since the onset of his powers, he had worn gloves at every moment, waking or asleep. Raven had tried briefly to cure him of the habit, until he had slashed himself or her in his sleep at least once a night for a week.

The gloves kept them safe... or as safe as they could be with a pair of monstrosities hiding beneath their skins, clamoring for a chance to emerge.

Not bothering with pants, Garfield strode out Raven's door and into the common room. He knew her well enough to know exactly where she would be at this hour: sitting at the table with a cup of chamomile tea held in her hands. He turned the corner to see her at the table. Bingo. Raven always went straight for the tea.

...Or, apparently, a bottle of bourbon and a rocks glass. Maybe he didn't know her so well.

"You're pouring a drink." He was too shocked for the surprise to even register in his voice.

Raven nodded in that inimitable way that meant the statement— and person— being acknowledged was too inane for her to waste a breath.

"A real drink. Not tea. I mean, jeez, I've never once seen you touch Cyborg's whiskey. I've never seen _him_ touch it, even."

She downed the shot, then nodded to the bit of curled plastic that lay on the table. The tamper-evident seal. Lovely.

He sat on the chair next to hers, placing his hands flat on the table so as not to fiddle with them. "So to what do we owe the displeasure?"

Black energy engulfed her shot glass, and within seconds it was reduced to a pile of dust.

"I think it's time you moved your things back to your own room." Raven's voice was that same careful monotone, but impossibly hoarse.

The world suddenly got much colder and smaller. It made sense, if he remembered Mento's lecture on thermodynamics correctly. "Oh."

The empath's eyes found his. "You don't seem too surprised."

"Well... I can't say I am, Raven. I mean, I thought that we were fine as of about three hours ago, but I always knew sooner or later I'd screw something up, and this fragile little whatever-it-is we have would fall apart." He grimaced, contorting his lips to fight the near-physical need to ask a question he probably didn't want answered. "So... what'd I do? What finally tipped the scales?"

The bottle came up to her lips, the sea of brown liquid inside rocking in waves as it flowed into her mouth. A swallow, then a cough that would have been considered delicate coming from anyone else. "You've been talking in your sleep," she said, staring at the white lettering on a black background.

The shapeshifter blinked and shook his head. "Wait, sorry, you said last week that that was— and I'm using your word here cause it shocked the crap out of me— cute."

A tiny hint of something flickered in her eyes; it was the Raven equivalent of a sad smile. "It is when you're talking about gerbil commandos and lollipops. Not when you're saying... things like what you said tonight." She drew a shuddering breath, and the bottle shot to her mouth again for a desperate swig.

He frowned. "What'd I say that was so bad?"

"Things you never say to me... things that could only be about _her_." The tone of the last word left no ambiguity.

"What could I possibly be saying to Terra that I wouldn't to you? I'm over her, Rae. I've been over her for years."

Raven's head snapped up to fix him with a stare. Her eyes shone with tears, and he was willing to bet they weren't just from the whiskey's burn. The thought was somehow comforting, and he hated himself for it. "Apparently not," she said just above a whisper. "Why else would you be saying the words, 'I love you'?"

Icy panic rushed over him, and he fought to clamp it down before she noticed.

The explosion of the chair next to them was a good indicator he'd failed.

"I knew it," she whispered, eyes wide. "Azar curse me for being so foolish, I should never have—"

In moments of extreme duress, Garfield Logan was given to making snap decisions that either succeeded outrageously or backfired so horribly that nothing could be salvaged.

And once he removed his lips from Raven's, he would find out which it was this time.

For the moment, though, he tried desperately to pour everything he felt for Raven into that kiss. He had to make her understand... and if that failed and this was his last kiss with her, he wanted it to be a memorable one.

The bottle of whiskey shattered, blasting them with lukewarm, sticky liquid. It pulled him back to reality just enough to make a horrible realization.

She wasn't kissing back.

Oh, this was _bad_.

He pulled away, an apology already coming to his lips, when he saw her expression.

Her face was not contorted in rage as he had expected from the bottle, but rather shellshocked, eyes wide, mouth hanging slightly open. A tiny dribble of blood rolled down her lower lip. He really had to be more careful with that fang...

Oh. She was probably waiting for him to say something. "Uh, so... did that maybe explain things, hopefully?" His voice came dangerously close to cracking the way it had years ago.

Mute, expression unchanged, she shook her head. Her mouth moved for a few moments before it finally produced a single word. "Overload."

The apologies came pouring out then, even as he rushed to pick up the shards of broken glass and mop up the mess.

When the last of the whiskey had been wiped away with a pair of dish towels, leaving only a vague gumminess, he chanced a peek at her face once more. It had settled a bit, but now nervousness danced in her eyes.

"So," he said, drawing the word out as he pieced together his thoughts, "I know you felt me freak out, but it's not for the reason you're thinking. Give me a second to explain, okay?"

She nodded, face reverting to blank and unreadable once more.

"Let's imagine for a moment that I were to say those words to you. What kind of reaction do you think I'd have to expect?"

A frown. "I think I'd put you through at least a few walls for making a joke like that."

He swallowed, bracing himself. "And if it wasn't a joke?"

Raven's eyes widened. Garfield heard something else blow up, but he didn't bother to check on what it was.

He put his hand on the back of his head and tugged on his hair. "Yeah, I've, uh, been trying to figure out how to get that one out there, and now it looks like it's just kind of... umm... surprise?" He put on his best please-don't-kill-me grin.

"Gar, I..." the purple-haired girl sighed and her hands made grasping gestures, wanting some object to hold. She settled for making fists.

"I know, Rae," he said. "It's a lot. And I don't expect you to say it back. A big part of why I didn't say anything was because I didn't want you to feel pressured. But now that you know, I hope you can stop worrying about Terra." Reaching tentatively for her hand, he pulled it toward his chest and brought it to where she could feel his heartbeat. "This is yours. And there's no one I'd rather have taking care of it than you."

"No!" she cried, ripping her hand away and cradling it as if burned. "I... I can't put you through that. It's going to be like this every time, Gar. You know how it goes with us: l read a signal wrong, I close off, I hurt you. It's who I am. You deserve better than that."

Garfield smirked. "Acceptable risk." Seeing her horrified expression, he continued. "Look, since it scares you so much, I'm gonna tell you something about how Star and Robin's relationship works. It could help for us too."

"You compare notes with Starfire?" Raven's eyebrow rose.

The changeling coughed. "Not, uh, everything. Definitely not about... _that_. It's just kind of... we were waiting around for you and Rob for a long time, and we sort of bonded over it. And now when we're trying to figure out relationship stuff, we talk it out with each other. It helps... sometimes a whole lot." Taking a deep breath, he continued. "Anyway, you know how Robin jumps to conclusions and flies off the handle at little things?"

That drew an almost-smirk from Raven. "No, when has he ever done that?" she drawled.

"Exactly. So, after their fifth or sixth round of fight and make up, Star suggested something from Tamaranean relationships that's actually pretty good advice for any couple. It's called 'heart trust'."

Raven's eyebrow went up again.

Beast Boy settled in for a long explanation. "Okay... so let's look at my track record for a second. Have I ever betrayed you in any way, or given you a reason not to trust me?"

A soft snort. "You mean apart from your questionable taste in—"

"Rae, please. Just for a minute, we need to be serious." Garfield stopped, then chuckled softly. "Yeah, there's some irony there. But be honest: when it really matters, have I ever given you any reason not to trust me?"

She pursed her lips and, after a moment of thought, shook her head.

"All right. Then just believe in me. Something may come up that makes you doubt me, but when it does, instead of reacting right away to whatever it is, you trust me. Come to me and talk about it; doesn't matter what it is, whether it's something huge or just a little thing that's bugging you. We talk it out, and I guarantee you, nothing is gonna be as bad as it seems at first."

Gray hands wrung together. "You're offering me your heart on a silver platter, and all you're asking in return is that I give you a shot at convincing me not to smash it whenever I'm feeling particularly capricious?" Her eyes were filled with self-loathing. "I don't like that, Gar."

Taking her hands in his, the changeling gave her a rueful grin. "Hate to tell you, but that's not an offer for my heart. You already have it, babe, and there's nothing either of us can do about that."

A strange look passed over her face, as though she were weighing an option.

Garfield stiffened, hands tightening over hers. "_No_. Out of the question. You are _not _brainwashing me out of love with you!" He took a deep breath, trying to blink back the tears forming in his eyes. "I know you're scared, but _please_, Raven. Please trust me enough to try. Open up enough to talk to me instead of blowing up or bottling it up, and I promise you, we can make this work."

Tension hung between them, an ever-growing stream of sand suffocating them further with every second, until finally the empath nodded. "Okay. We can try."

Relief washed over Beast Boy, and the weight was gone. "Thank you, Raven."

She favored him with one of her rare smiles. "Don't mention it. Now let's get back to bed."

As Raven stood, she wobbled a bit. Beast Boy was on his feet in an instant, an arm around her waist for support. "Easy there," he said. "If you drink sitting down, it can sneak up on you."

"Mmhmm," the half-demon said as she nuzzled his neck, setting all his nerves afire as only she could. "Gar?"

"Yeah?" He did an admirable job keeping his voice level, considering that every instinct in him was screaming to put the table to nefarious purposes.

"It would appear that whiskey's a bit of an aphrodisiac for me."

Blood rushed through him even faster, unsure whether to settle in his face or elsewhere. He made a mental note to pick up a bottle or two extra when he replaced Cyborg's tomorrow. "Duuuuude."

**AN:** For those of you who recognized it, "heart trust" is taken from Kryalla Orchid's E'ara universe. For those of you who didn't recognize it, go read her work. All of it.


	31. The World Is Not Enough

**AN:** Here's what happens when I go on a Shirley Manson kick. There's just something so evil and sultry about her voice...

And on a lighter note, _WOW_! This collection is fast approaching a hundred reviews! I know I said something similar last chapter, but really, I never once imagined this would turn into what it has. Thank you to each and every one of you who has read, reviewed, sent me a PM, anything. I'd especially like to thank those of you who've been kind enough to review multiple chapters: fei-fie-fo-fum (FF won't let me use periods), IronRaven, Concolor44, TheBlindRaven, Nkcandygirl, Curse You Perry the Platypus, Pauliejuice, KevlarMasquerade, and most recently but certainly not least, Jozefski. Seeing people enjoy this enough to keep coming back for more really does inspire me to keep churning out new ideas.

**Disclaimer:** My only payment for playing around with these things I don't own is your feedback, and I'm more grateful than I can adequately express for it.

**The World Is Not Enough— Garbage**

Four red eyes surveyed the wasteland that had been Jump City.

Just as before, the sky swirled with darkness, blood-red clouds blocking the cursed sun from view. Where water once flowed, molten lava stood in its place. And all around, the townsfolk stood frozen in stone, abject horror obvious on every face.

It was the same all over the world. Even the Justice League's vaunted Watchtower had not escaped the spell. All of Earth's greatest defenders were every bit as helpless as the mother of two clutching her children's hands in the middle of the crosswalk.

The only difference was that this time, instead of Trigon the Terrible, the Earth suffered under the yoke of his seed.

It had been so very simple, really: one point of pressure, and the foolish girl from Azarath had caved in on herself, leaving a vacuum to be filled.

The green boy always had been her weakness.

A few ounces of metal in thirteen-gram increments, haphazard in their distribution, and he had flown beyond her pitiful reach in the space of a heartbeat.

The instant that purple eyes had fallen upon unseeing green ones, the bank robber's soul had been sucked from his body and thrown into Outer Perdition, chained to await her pleasure.

He had an eternity of torture ahead of him, but she had little inclination for such diversions just yet.

As she had cradled her lost lover, her father's voice had begun whispering to her, reminding her of all the power that could be hers. To a near-omnipotent being, resurrection was a mere parlor trick. She had already damned herself in the Titans' eyes by willfully taking a life; now she had no home, no friends. The boy, however, had promised her that he would always stand by her. And really, what was life without him? He was the best part of her, the only part truly worth saving.

The decision was made in the time it took the first tear to fall from her eye and drop into the hole in his forehead.

By the time the second tear fell, the copper was spinning counterclockwise out of the wound and leaving behind flesh that was rapidly mending itself.

There was no third tear. Within a matter of seconds, every bullet was suspended above the boy's body, the holes in his uniform exposing nothing but healthy green skin.

Then she made his heart beat once more, that marvelous heart whose steady drumming made everything wrong with the world disappear.

With the vessel prepared, she delved into the dark to reclaim what was forever hers.

Raven found him floating in the void, struggling to return to his life, to her. It was touching, really.

Trigon's daughter took her time sifting through her lover's soul, cherry-picking precisely what she most desired and siphoning it back into his body.

She was, quite literally, making the man of her dreams.

That awful sense of humor, that pesky sense of ethics, that compassion for all those around him— these were of no use to her anymore. But his unwavering loyalty, the singleminded devotion to her that bordered on religion... _that_ would make an excellent core for her new consort. He would truly be deserving of the power he would wield, a worthy mate for the ruler of the galaxy.

It had been all too easy to bring back the parts of his soul that best served her newfound purposes, leaving behind most of the boy to wither in the endless nothing.

There was more than enough beast in him to replace the missing pieces.

Even now, as he stood by her side, she could sense the gaps she had left in his psyche filling in with raw, primal instinct. Only the sheer determination that had drawn her to him in the first place— so like a force of nature— kept the animal within from subsuming his higher functions.

She could lend a hand, of course, but it was so delicious to watch him struggle. She knew he would win, because he was worthy of her. It was that simple.

Hours passed in silence as they stood, he locked in a titanic struggle with himself, she savoring his agony. Finally, he let out a deep, shuddering sigh and locked his eyes with hers.

"That," he said, voice hoarse and finally rid of that pesky trepidation that had made it crack so often, "Was not easy."

"Indeed," she replied. Reaching out a clawed hand to caress his face, Raven watched bliss swim into his eyes from her touch. "Come, then, and claim your reward," she whispered.

His kiss was fiery, filled with a purity of purpose and desire unsullied by more human considerations. There was only lust, possession, raw need. Fangs summoned each other's blood to flow over lips and tongues, the consummation of an eternal bond.

They pulled apart, not nearly sated, but content for the moment to gaze upon Raven's handiwork below them. As they reveled in the destruction, their wounds closed just as quickly as they had opened without so much as a conscious thought.

A green hand found the small of her back, and Raven brought her fingers to the changeling's hair and began stroking. "You will truly be a worthy mate," she murmured. "In the millennia still to come before my father's arrival can take place once more, you and I will conquer this world and countless others."

"And the Titans?" he asked, no hint of sentiment in his voice or heart. "You let them live." It was a mere statement of fact; he could sense it through the bond they shared, but felt nothing of it other than mild curiosity. Any verdict she passed regarding their former teammates, he would see through to its final resolution.

"They are of no use to me. I spared them so that you and I could have a bit of entertainment, and that they might feel despair crushing their souls until they pray for the end." She smiled, fangs glistening with blood. "After all, what use have I for anyone but you? You are my consort, my confidant, my Menagerie."

Black energy flowed from her chakra stone, growing to an immense cloud that blanketed the entire city, blotting out even the reddened sky. Her soul swam among the stone statues, relishing the terror she felt pouring from each spirit trapped within.

"And together," the Gem said, voice echoing around the Earth, "We can take the world apart, my love."

**AN:** Wheee! Darkness everywhere! Also, yes, that new name for Gar is a reference to Kingdom Come. It's probably my favorite exploration of superhero ethics ever.


End file.
